


The Disappearance of James T Kirk

by Sherb42



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: 1960's AU, 60's Rock, Car Chases, ET au (it counts), First Contact, First Kiss, Government Agencies, Kirk can't sing, M/M, Mind Meld, Modern AU, Sarek is a dick (what's new?), UFOs, Unreliable Narrator, Vulcan Language, lots of corn, unprofessional podcast making
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-01 22:29:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 48,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20919533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherb42/pseuds/Sherb42
Summary: It’s July of 1969 and the entirety of the USA seemed to have space fever. That is, however, aside from James T Kirk, a very recent military school dropout who’s come back to his hometown to try and sort himself back out. When he encounters a wounded alien who’s crash-landed in the middle of a neighbouring farm, it’s a race against the clock, the US government, and the alien’s rapidly deteriorating health, to try and bring him back home.Oh, and also their growing feelings for each other, but that's quite low on their shared priority list among the chaos of everything else.---A story told in part by two people who really should be doing something better with their time than hosting a conspiracy-based podcast episode on Kirk’s mysterious, possibly alien-related, disappearance.[This is a work in progress, any comments, critiques, and other such interactions would be greatly appreciated.]





	1. Return to Riverview

**Author's Note:**

> I got told in a comment that my narrating gave them the impression of a Twilight Zone-style narrator on one of my fics. That’s not a good reason for me to use a weird framing device like this, other than It’s very much just a way to exposition dump without the characters in the story just explaining everything to each other - I’d admit that. 
> 
> Stick with me on this there is a Spirk fanfiction somewhere in here.
> 
> Also just to put it out in the open, this is also unashamedly kinda inspired by other work such as the 'Alien' by falsepremise and a tad of first few chapters of 'Beta Lyrae' by rapier_puree - both can be found here on A03.

_The start of an electronic theme song started and then quickly faded. The microphones that are in use are either cheap or lavalier, but the two voices that are speaking don’t seem to care about that. The first voice began to speak in a casual and regional American accent - the other speaker had one similar. Both are younger, around the same age as our protagonists. Together, they sound generic enough that their work makes for nothing bigger than something to fill some open time, but are having fun in what they're doing. _

G: “It’s the summer of 1969. A small town in the middle of Iowan farmland is visited by strange lights in the sky, crop circles, episodes of selective memory loss, and a Russian satellite crash site that became so closed off by the US government that they had to tent off the area and have guards posted around it. Right smack-dab in the middle of all of this chaos, a young man is reported missing and his body to this day has still yet to be found. His name was James Tiberius Kirk, and was 19 at the time – making him almost 70 today if he is still alive.

James’s home, when later investigated, had been found with a whole bunch of disassembled electrics scatted around and what was reported to have been crop circles drawn into the disused field behind it. The windows and doors of the home had all been replaced fairly recently and the front yard had its turf replaced, likely at the same time as the other repairs. All his essentials had been left as they were, included overnight bags full of dirty clothes that were left half unpacked.”

James also had a car at the time, but after putting it in at a local mechanic’s for some work to be done he never came back to pick it up. It appeared that there had been evidence of an unknown green substance in the back seats, but a later analysis showed that it was likey some kind of animal blood.”

R: “Spooky.”

G: “It gets a little spookier. Not only did James seem to just disappear out of thin air, the days leading up his disappearance he had reportedly been seen going around the town and to a local music show with an unknown stranger – and keep in mind this was a town where everybody knew everybody - and news about who’s where travels fast. This man had not talked to anybody aside from James himself. This stranger was never seen entering or leaving the town, and after James’s disappearance, has not been seen since.”

R: “Sort of like a vampire.”

G: “Oh yeah, that’s another theory that people have had, yes.” _[laughter] _“But we’re getting ahead of ourselves there.

An alien crash, visitation, and abduction in plain sight? Or just an unfortunate soul who slipped through the cracks during an eventful summer? You will have to be the judge of that. Hello. My name’s Gene I’m here with my co-host Rick,”

R: “yI'el,”

G: “And we will be your sneak peek into the strange, mysterious, and unknown for the next hour. Welcome to Episode 47 of ‘Planet 3.’”

_The retro-style synth track began to play again. The track itself began to fade into a classic rock rendition, the wind all around becoming louder and louder._

* * *

* * *

A rock song was playing on a car’s radio as loudly as the car could manage over the roar of the wind.

The late afternoon was warm, the 63’ convertible drove by endless crop fields on either side of the road with its cover down. That’s all that there was out here, corn. Maybe a cow or two if you were lucky, but this far in you weren’t going to be. The car was driving too a small town in what felt like the middle of absolute-fucking-nowhere in Iowa. It was July, and god did it feel like it. There was something gothic about driving down these old roads and being the only living thing around. For a small moment, the word was empty, and you were finally free.

The car came to a T-intersection, and instead of slowing down to turn the driver made the car drift. He missed, cutting into the edge of an unfenced field, and kept on driving.

I think now that it’s a good time to introduce the driver – the young man who will be our primary protagonist for the duration of this story. His name is, or perhaps I should say was, James T Kirk. ‘Jim’ to friends, ‘Kirk’ to people that weren’t, or ‘James’ to people who really should know better, or could have at least done a little more research. He had a working tan on his body and face, his hair was a dark blond with his eyes a soft brown. You wouldn’t describe Kirk as being skinny, but that wasn't at all a bad thing. He ended up growing into a sort of ‘if you’re busy working out, they can’t bother you,’ sort of person. 'Built for huging,' as his mother once called him. Kirk had a soft face that a smile sat nicely in and one of the worse 'singing' voices a person could create. 

I’m fairly sure that you may know about him already, or at least a version or two of who he will one day become. This Kirk still has a while to go yet until those days, a long while.

The only valuable thing that Kirk currently owned all to himself was his car, asides maybe his kidneys. You could still probably get more for the car if you knew who to sell it too. He was currently in his cadet pants and a half stolen military jacket with very fake feeling fur lining the inside. The shirt under it was a red plaid one, and under that a singlet, not that this information really even mattered much to the story mind you.

Kirk drove past a property. _Nope._ A few minutes later he drove past another on the other side. _Not that one._ After a while more of driving, he came to another. In between the rest of all the properties was one that seemed to be a black spot among them all. He stopped before the aged gate, reached under to unlock it, and then drove the car inside, not bothering to close it up after him. 

Kirk was never fond of this house. The only good thing about it was that it was currently empty. He parked the car under an old pine tree by the front on a dirt driveway. 

Around the house were acres of unused farmland. Once it had been used to grow an even mix of corn and wheat, but for the last several years it had just been left to its own devices. There was spluttering of wild wheat in there for sure, but those plants had only been whatever leftovers had been able to grow against the half-dead grass. Kirk wished that he'd have at least rented the land out to a neighbour or something instead of letting it all just rot away. It was dry land, sure, but with a bit of work it was still good land.

I mean, it wouldn’t have been too much work to put some cattle on it, would it? You might need a new fence or two, but they could have used the rent money that would have given them.

Kirk kicked open the door, using his arm to push it out of his way with a creak.

The only good thing about this shithole property was that nobody was currently in it. George was off somewhere in Korea and his stepfather was equally absent (what’s new there?) after apparently being arrested again a couple of months ago. The ownership of the land was still shared between the three of them because _something something Will something don’t wanna deal with a lawyer something,_ but even if it wasn't, it wouldn't have stopped Kirk from camping out here.

Everything had been left where it had last sat, a thin sheet of dust covered everything. There were dents in some of the walls and childhood scribbles on others. Wallpaper that had been peeling off was still flaking off, revealing some water damage that Kirk hoped wasn’t new. In one of the vents it looked as if an animal had made its way in and made a nest. Eh, Kirk didn’t really care. He was doing the same.

Imagine now, a small montage of Kirk trying to clean and fix the house up just enough to want to stay in it. He flicked on the fuse box, there was a moment of light from the house before sparks were thrown back at him. Kirk coughed and then tried again. Boom – there was light. At least the water didn’t try and attack him when he turned it on.

The fridge was no better. Kirk opened it, saw 3 months’ worth of abandoned food, closed it, did every other job he could think of, and then spent an hour cleaning it all out. It was probably the best clean that old thing had ever gotten.

Kirk finally 'flomped' down onto the couch and took a swig from the beer that he had picked up on his way back from getting some gas. It was overpriced as all hell, but it felt good to drink it. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. The fan had a loud click to it that seemed to miss every 9th click. He picked up a dusty pillow with a horse printed onto it, and screamed into it. 

Kirk moved to the back deck to finish the beer. He was old enough to drink it– be quite. It wasn’t like he had gotten carded, anyways. I said it just before, but man that field was depressing. By now it was night, a soft glow of the town was on the horizon and the stars dotted the sky. The moon wasn’t quite yet full, but he didn’t really want to look at it tonight.

That stupid rock had been all that people had been able to talk about.

* * *

The next thing that Kirk knew was that he was speeding back down one of the roads, the cover of his car all the way down and the wind was flying everywhere. He didn’t give a shit as too what road it was, or where exactly he was due to end up. He skirted his car into one of the properties and drove right into the corn itself.

He couldn't see where we was going: all that he knew was that it was in circles. At one point he stood up, got whacked in the face with a couple of soon-to-be-ears of corn, sat back down, and laughed. Another drift, this time doughnuting and stopping the car in a Kirk-made corn clearing. He couldn’t do anything better but laugh.

Kirk climbed up on top of the hood of his car. He yelled out into the never-ending cornfield with more passion than he had ever done anything in his life before.

_“FUCK YOU RIVERSIDE." _Was what was screamed.

There was nobody else there to hear it, nobody to tell him to shut up or to get back into the car. For the first time, the prospect of being alone scared him – and it was a real fear. Kirk had nothing left.

“Give me _something_ to work with here,” he pleaded to the corn. 

There was nothing, not at first. Kirk sighed, patted his chest for a cigarette, and then remembered that he was out of them. _Dammit_. The wind began to pick up. “Just, for _anything_ to happen, yaknow? I don’t care what.”

There was a distant sound of a sort of ‘bang’ from somewhere. Kirk could hardly hear it over the volume of the wind roaring in his ears.

A few moments later, the sun began to rise.

Something was wrong with the sun.


	2. The Corn Hears All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spork's here. 
> 
> Translations for spoken Vulcan in this fic will be in the endnotes.

Something was wrong with the sun. That alone was clear to anybody who saw it that night.

It was a single point of brilliant red and gold, and it made the entire sky light up like the sunset in reverse. Kirk put a hand over his forehead to try and shield himself from the light as it came closer. It wasn’t a Sun, it was some sort of meteorite.

_Holy shit, it was getting closer – and it was getting close fast._

Kirk, for lack of anything better to do in the split second he had to make the decision, jumped off his car into the dirt and narrowly avoided the meteorite as it crashed into the corn behind him.

He could hear the sound of a good few hundred meters of said corn be crushed as the meteorite skipped to a forced stop, the sound of the stop sounded mechanical, and was loud enough to hurt when close enough to the source. The whole trip from when Kirk could first see the thing and for it to crash couldn’t have taken longer than 20, maybe 30 seconds at most. All of a sudden there was another huge bang, this sound was one that Kirk could recognize as being the sound of a sonic boom going past.

Kirk brushed the mud off his face and forced himself back upright, catching his balance on the front of his car. The glow that it had before was still all around, but this time was only in the corn. It took Kirk longer that it should have to realise that it was because the corn was on fire.

In the direction that the meteorite had landed stretched a huge hole in both the corn and the soil, the ground a scorched black. It was like somebody had carved it with a burning hot knife, and it had set what was left on fire.

Going against his own better judgment, Kirk began to walk down the newly-carved path. The air was warm and the wind was still strong.

Kirk didn’t think this thing was a meteorite once he got a good look at it. It was large and shiny - almost too shiny. It was shaped like a seed and was the size of a small van, it had a ring of some sort attached to the back that had a blue glow that was now fading. The whole outside of it was badly beaten up, and towards the front looked like it had been shot. This area of damage was dark - looking like it had been burnt, and the burn was spreading up over the ship like roots. There was no wonder that it had needed to land. 

The top section of the ship opened up with an aggressive hiss. The hot air leaving from the inside was visible, even from Kirk’s distance. This open area was dark like polarized glass and took up the front quarter of the thing. The glass was reflecting the light of the fire, but not as strongly as the rest of the ship was. Was it a plane of some kind? No - it didn’t have any wings. It had to have been some sort of ship if it had just crashed, but Kirk had only seen something like this in science fiction.

Kirk stood his ground as the top panel slowly opened up, wishing that he had a bat or a gun or something on him just in case.

_Holy crap, there was somebody inside of the thing. _The person had pushed the panel open from the inside and staggered to its legs while still inside of it. The right arm hung low and under the body – clearly injured.

He, if it even _was_ a 'he,' wasn’t quite right. He was lanky and tall, but in such a way it didn’t quite work. His arms and legs were long, but that was really as much as Kirk could figure out under the man’s black and baggy clothing. His posture was bad, and he was clearly struggling to breathe with all the smoke around him.

The large coat on him was like the top half of a Kimono, the large and freshly-ripped sleeves blew in the wind. On the edges of the coat was piping of golden swirls. It was the same with his hair. Short, black, and starting to matt together with, what? What is that? Blood? It looked like blood - but in the light of the fire it looked almost a dark green.

The man saw Kirk, the two of them making eye contact like a deer before you shot it. He couldn't have been more than a few years older than Kirk. He moved the arm that was hanging down up, his palm facing outwards. It was split between the ring and middle finger as he kept it there for a long as he could manage it. Kirk waved back carefully before the man collapsed, falling into the wreckage with a thunk as what little life that had been left in him disappeared. Kirk instinctively ran towards him, catching him right before he would have landed in the mud. Kirk grabbed the other tightly, trying to stop him from falling any further down. It felt like there was some kind of spark when the two of them touched. 

This was when Kirk was able to get a better look at the man’s face. His ears were long and pointed – almost like an elf. ‘Scruffy’ was a word you could use, but would have just been a result of just being in a crash. His skin was green in hue and his eyebrows slanted upwards, but the rest of his face was still in shock.

Aside from a pair of small dark brown eyes, that was. They looked angry. Angry and afraid.

There was fresh burns on his face as well as new cuts. “Ri- Ri-” the man struggled to say as he pushed Kirk away, clearly in a lot of pain and having trouble staying alert. “Ri tor esta.” The green stuff on him was leaking out of the cuts, as well as from his mouth and nose. It was definitely blood, however that could have been.

Kirk was able to catch him again, holding on tighter this time. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” Kirk said, getting a mouthful of the Stanger’s hair. It was soft and straight, aside from all the green blood that was stuck to it. The blood tasted metallic, but not in the usual sort of way.

“Ri tor esta nash-veh-” The man blurted out again, angrier this time. He was clearly very stressed.

“I’m trying to help you,” Kirk barked back. The man’s skin was incredibly warm, most likely from the growing fire that was around them both. Kirk could feel a sudden stabbing pain all over his body, the worse of it in his right shoulder. He winced, let go, and the pain subsided. The other fell into some crushed corn with an undignified 'melp.' 

The two of them looked at each other for a slip second that felt like it had been slowed down into hours. Kirk looked up above the man, smoke was coming from the inside of the ship. Said inside was filled with what looked like buttons and flat television screens inset into the sides of the cockpit, as well as was seemed to be a yoke-like device before a chair. There was a hole in the console close to where the outside mark would have possibly connected too. There was a series of aggressive sparks from one of the screens, and black smoke from another. Something began to beep like a fire alarm. 

The man struggled to pull himself up and away from the crash, Kirk helping the best that he could. The two of them then managed to walk a couple of meters together before the man collapsed again. Kirk hosted the good arm over his own shoulder, giving him as much strength as he could give. The man was way heavier than Kirk was expecting him to be, but felt like he was all bone under his clothing.

And, as if just to make everything worse, the ship blew. The man came close to Kirk, shielding himself with Kirk’s body from the shrapnel. Kirk contained to half carry, half guide the man back to his car.

Kirk left the man by the door to the passenger seat, letting them both catch their breath as they leaned against it.

The man’s face looked different now that they were out of the direct light of the fire. He was tired, dark rings around his eyes. The angles of his jaw and chin where only being highlighted in the harsh shadows. The once rapid breathing that the man had moments ago began to slow down as he got his composure back. Kirk noticed this and moved around to him, not really knowing what to do. “Holy shit,” he sang softly, _“Hoooooly shit.”_

The man just closed his eyes and groaned.

The fire was growing by the moment, the whole field had to have been ablaze at this point. There was a gunshot. Kirk froze. _Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. He was going to get arrested for arson – at best. _He picked up the man the best he could, opened the back door and pushed him inside. Kirk then jumped over his seat and looked around a he stood there. 

There was a house in the distance, him now knowing that it was there because of its lights being on. Kirk got one last look at the ship – there really wasn’t much left of it. The ship itself was now on fire, but this fire was a blistering hot and clean burning in a light blue. Kirk turned to look at his new passenger, the passenger had halfly managed to sit himself up, leaving fingerprints of green blood around him. “T'nash-veh hali,” He said weakly, trying to get out of the car.

Kirk dived down, avoiding a bullet to the head. “Oh no you don’t,” he said in a panic as he put the car into reverse.

The man, not being seatbelted, had to catch himself from sliding around in the back of Kirk’s chair. He grunted in pain when this happened.

There was suddenly a hand on the side of Kirk’s head, long fingers working to find his temple. In a rapid second, the dash of the car suddenly changed to the inside of the ship, the half-burning corn changing to the night sky. There was suddenly a rapid beeping from one of the scenes to his right, and then a bright light from the other side. Kirk slammed on the breaks, the car skirting as it did. The passenger was flung to the other side of the back seats.

Kirk blinked a couple of times to shake away the vision and then half climbed, half turned around to see the other man’s face, his leg still on the breaks and a hand holding the bottom of the steering wheel. “What the fuck was that?” Kirk asked.

The man didn’t respond. His arms were splayed out and pressed on the window behind him, one leg was up and the other in the footrest.

“You can’t - you can’t go back to there!” Kirk said. “You’ll be _killed._”

It was clear that the man had no idea what Kirk was saying, but could sense the severity of what was being said. “Ke-ed,” he attempted to repeat. His accent, whatever it was supposed to be, was incredibly thick.

There was another gunshot.

Kirk took that has his que to keep on driving far, far away from there. He drove into more corn, half of it ended up hitting his face. It wasn’t fun the second time, it was scary.

The road eventually came, and Kirk only took his eyes off it once to see the extent of the fire. An orange glow with a blue centre, the glow being caught in an engulfment of black smoke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _>“Ri tor esta nash-veh, [Do not touch me]” The man blurted out again, angrier this time. He was clearly very stressed. _ "Nash-veh" is more or less the Vulcan version of 'me' or 'I.'  
_>“T'nash-veh hali, [My ship]” He said weakly, trying to get out of the car._


	3. Thinking, Speaking, Touching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should warn now that the next few chapters are going to be a lot of talking between these two. It’s gonna be a little slow, but hopefully, it will be worth the read. 
> 
> Vulcan translations will be below, although since most of this chap is the two going '[word in English?]' '[same word in Vulcan]' I'll just put the bigger things down there to spare repeating myself too much.

[…]

G: “Of course we know now that –“ 

_There was the sound of a phone buzzing. The microphone was switched off and the take cut there. “Hang on,” one of the men said as he stood up. The other mic had been left on during this interaction had somehow been completely missed during the editing phase of the whole production. _

R: “What’s up?”

G: “Dinner’s here.” 

R: _“Dude._ C’mon.” 

G: “I’m starved already, and I won’t eat when the mics are on - don’t worry about it.” 

_There was a sigh before the mic that was still on before the person behind it took a drink of something. _

R: “just eat after like normal.” 

G: “it'd be too cold by then.” 

[…]

* * *

Kirk kicked open the front door. The man from the crash was slung over his shoulder, green blood getting on both of them. Kirk was able to flick on the light as they made their way to the lounge room couch. He let the other fall onto it with that bounce that you usually get when falling onto a couch. 

He honestly had no idea what to do next. What are you actually meant to do here? Did you call somebody? A doctor? The government? It’s not like he could have just left him in the crash and burn to death, or get shot by whoever owned the field that was now ruined. 

The other man didn’t know what to do either. He moved a pillow out of the way and sat himself up. 

“I’m Jim,” Kirk said in an attempt to introduce himself, “I’m a human.” _What the hell was he doing? This guy looked human, right? Was he one? Can people be green? Was he an alien? AhhhHHHHHHHHH. _

Nothing. 

Kirk found a newspaper that had been left on the coffee table and showed him the front page. He made it clear that he was interacting with each of the photographs of the people that were on it. “Humans,” he gestured to himself, “Jim. I’m Jim, a human,” back at the people in the newspaper, “Humans,” And back to himself, “Jim - human.” He tried to explain it the best that he could, knowing fully that he was making absolutely no sense. 

The man gestured weakly to Kirk. “Ji-m,” he said. 

_“Jim.” _

“Ji-m.” His second attempt was only a little better. 

Kirk sighed. He came a little closer and gestured back to the man. He took the cue and put his own hand on his chest. “Spock.” 

“Spock!” Kirk replied a little louder than he should have, happy the two were getting through to each other. It was an interesting name to say the least. 

Spock gestured to himself in a more general way. “Vulkhansu.” 

Kirk put his hand towards Spock. “Valk-hans-su,” was the best that he could pronounce it. He pointed back to himself. “Human.”

“Komihn.” Spock informed, pointing at Kirk before correcting himself. “Hue-man.” 

“Is that what you people call us? Koh-min?” Kirk asked. “Where are you from?” Kirk thought for a moment before running up to his old room. “Wait there,” he said as he did it. 

A minute or two passed before Kirk came back with a kid’s astrology book in his hand. He crouched down before Spock and opened on a double-page spread of the solar system. “This is where we are,” Kirk said, pointing to the drawing of Earth. “Earth. We’re on Earth.” 

“Earh-th.” Spock replied. 

Kirk then made his way down the planets. “The Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. And this little one around the Earth is called the Moon.” Kirk then stood up and pointed to the almost full moon in the window. “That’s the Moon.” Kirk came back and opened the page again. 

Spock seemed to understand what he was being told, and then pointed to each mass in the paper the same way Kirk had done. “Sol, Sol-wuhkuh, Sol-dahkuh, Sol-rehkuh, Sol-kehkuh, Sol-kaukuh, Sol-shehkuh, Sol-stehkuh, Sol-ohkuh, Sol-naukuh,” Spock explained. It was clear to Kirk that Spock must have been saying numbers. He looked at Kirk, the window, and then pointed back at the drawing of the moon. “Sol-rehkuh-wuhkuh.” 

Sol-three-one.” Kirk repeated. “I guess that makes sense. What one are you from? Are you from number three-one?” He then pressed the drawing of the Moon. “Are you from here?” 

Spock seemed slightly confused at the question. 

Kirk sighed again and put the book down. “’Cause I know they’re sending people to the moon pretty soon, maybe you’re here to stop them?” He said dismissively. 

It was clear that they needed a better way to talk to each other. Oh! They can write! His kind must have some kind of written language, right? 

Kirk stood back up and grabbed an old notebook and ballpoint pen. He drew a scribble on the paper to show how both devices worked. 

Spock picked up both pen and paper for himself and drew something on the notebook. It was a row of circles with a line through the middle of them. “Mokuhlek du kitau?” He asked. 

Kirk shrugged. He didn’t know what he meant. “Are you writing words?” He asked. “Because if you are, I don’t know what that says.” _Actually, this may not have been a very good plan in hindsight. _

Spock seemed frustrated. Kirk took the paper and pen back from Spock and wrote ‘yes’ on the paper with a crude smiley face next to it and pointed to it with a smile of his own and a nod. “Yes, this is good.”

Spock slowly repeated the motion. Kirk then wrote ‘no’ in much the same way next to it, putting on a frown as he did so. “No, not good,” he said with a shake. Spock copied the shaking before taking the paper back. He put some swirly notes next to each word, as well as redrawing each of the faces. It all looked a little like contorting art – the kind you have to do without lifting your pen up. If the written language was all cursive, it made sense that this was how he would draw. The drawing of the faces seemed to highlight the teeth and eyebrows of the face. 

Kirk took the pen and added round ears to the two diagrams. Spock just sort of looked at him as if to wondering why he had done that, but Kirk just smiled back. Spock put his index finger and thumb on the corner of his mouth and pulled them up to match. Kirk’s own smile became bigger with a soft laugh. “There you go,” he said. “Humans sort of speak with their faces, that’s how we show emotion.” 

Spock nodded. He seemed to relax a little more. 

“Or do that. I don’t know how you guys do it but that’s more or less it.” 

“Du nah-tor ni ral,” Spock said in admiration of Kirk. He seemed to also almost wince as he said it. 

“Dou nahh tore ni rall,” Kirk repeated. 

Spock shook his head and then pulled his mouth down into a frown. “Du, J-im,” Spock said as he pointed to Kirk. He then pointed to Kirk’s head and out again, “Nah-tor,” and then gestured words coming out from his own mouth, “Ral.” He said ‘ral’ rather loudly. 

Kirk took a moment to process what he was being told. “What are you saying? Do you speak with your minds? Because I can’t.” There was equal frustration between both parties. Kirk could feel that he had completely missed what he had been told. 

The two of them exchanged equal grimaces. Spock put his hands together to try and think - this was clearly not working. After a few moments, Spock put his palms out in front of him and held them there as if he was waiting for something to happen. He looked up at Kirk. 

Kirk looked at his own hands. They were a lot shorter, and a lot pinker. They were covered all over in thick calluses – calluses that Spock didn’t have. “You can share pain through your skin, right?” Kirk asked, looking back at Spock. “Can you share thoughts through your skin? Is that how Valk-hans-su speak?” 

_Godammit, they were so close. _

Kirk tried again, gesturing to Spock. “Valk-hans-su,” he moved his hands to his head, “nahh tore, think,” and then moved them to his mouth, “rall? Speak?” _Did his kind know that thoughts came through the head? Of course they did! They invented spaceships, they would know how a brain works. Was that what Spock was trying to tell him? _

Spock seemed to pipe up on recognizing what Kirk was trying to say. “Stariben,” he said, miming the same act of sound coming out of his mouth. “Spe-kin.”

“Starie ben, speaking.” 

Spock nodded. 

Kirk put his hand on his temple. “Nahh tore, thinking?”

Spock mirrored. “Then-kin, nah-tor.” 

_Okay, they were getting somewhere. Maybe they were going around in a bit of a circle, but it was more of a roundabout than a total roadblock. _“Starie ben? Valk-hans-su starie ben?” Kirk asked, hovering his hands a centimetre or two above Spock’s. All Kirk could do was hope that Spock understood what he was asking. _‘do Vuhlkansu speak with their hands?’_

Spock insisted his hands closer up with a nod. “Vuhlkansu mokuhlek, _spe-kin,_ du', _then-kin.”_ He was clearly adding English to what he was saying. 

Kirk put his own hands together. “Touch.” 

“Tou-ch. Esta.” Spock replied, putting his own hands together before parting them again. 

“Esta, Starie ben?”

Spock’s smile was organic this time. “Yes," he said. 

Kirk touched his own hands down onto Spock’s. He quickly felt a sharp shooting pain in his shoulder and pulled back with a yelp. It wasn’t just the pain that got Kirk, it was the sudden feeling of fear that came with it right after. Spock pulled himself back the same way. “No, no, I just didn’t expect it to be that - _ow,”_ Kirk replied, rubbing the side of his arm. “Is this what you did in the car before, when you showed me your ship being hit?”

Spock’s face went green, greener than before.

Kirk stood up and took the other side of the couch. Spock turned to face him and neatly crossed his legs as he did it. Kirk attempted to do the same, only managing to get one of his legs folded with the other was still on the floor. Spock brought his own hands back up and moved them to hover above Kirk’s face. 

Kirk saw them go around and then looked back at Spock. Even if Spock was an alien, his eyes felt exceptionally human. _Was Spock waiting for a show of consent? Could Spock read his mind with a touch?_ “Spock Esta, satarie ben Jim?” Kirk asked. _‘If Spock touches, [will he] speak [with] Jim?’ was what he tried to imply. _

“Spock heh J-im, Tou-ch, spe-kin.” Spock affirmed. _‘Spock [and] Jim [need to] touch to speak.'_ Was the feeling that Spock gave off. _Perhaps they were close enough already for this to be in effect._

Taking a breath, Kirk closed his eyes and let Spock touch his head. 

Everything went dark. A friendly warmth came over the pair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > Spock gestured to himself in a more general way. “[_Vulcan._]” 
> 
> > All the planet naming is just Spock going 'Sol-number.' Kirk figured this out. Sol-1, Sol-2, ect. 
> 
> > It was a row of circles with a line through the middle of them. “[_can you write?_]” He asked. 
> 
> > [_You think so/too loud,_]” Spock said in admiration of Kirk.
> 
> > Du/you, Nah-tor/think, Ral/loud, Stariben/speaking, Esta/touch
> 
> > Spock insisted his hands closer up with a nod. “[_Vulcans can [speak] when [thinking,]]_” He was clearly adding English to what he was saying.


	4. Sa-mekh, Sa-kai, Ko-kai, Mother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I-Chaya is the best parent that any of the S'chn T'gai kids ever had, tbh.

[…]

R: “Now, James had always seemed to have had a rough childhood. His father was killed in active service when he was pretty much a baby and his mother remarried when James was eight. The Kirk family, as well as their new father of the house, lived on a rather large property towards the outside of the town. 

James’s older brother, Samuel Kirk, is still alive and is actually a grandfather of his own. When I called him a few weeks ago asking if he had anything to say on the case for us he replied with ‘Fuck off,’ and then demanded to know how I got his number.”

G: “How inconsiderate.” 

R: “I _know,_ right?” 

G: “Anyways, it wasn’t like Samuel would have been able to give much info on the case anyways, even if he wanted too. He hadn’t of been in the country at the time, as he had been drafted into the Korean War when he had disappeared.” 

R: “James also didn’t have the best school record. Lots of fights with fellow students, even a good amount of skipping school.”

G: “We know this because it was put in a public profile. Don’t go through privet school and government records, kids.” 

R: “He made it all the way to junior year before following in is his older brother’s footsteps and began to attend St Michael’s Military Academy in a state over on and off for almost a year solid. Three weeks before James was first reported missing he got into a pretty sketchy altercation with the sergeants in charge and left not all that long after. It wasn’t the first time that he had issues, but it was the last.” 

G: “Knowing what dates that we know from witnesses and the like, it took James almost a week to drive back, likely treating the journey home more like a road trip than anything.” 

[…]

* * *

Kirk could feel himself lying in the sand. 

He wanted to stay there forever with the sun in his face and his eyes closed. A large shadow came over him. Kirk looked up, it was a large creature – maybe even the size of a bear. It was friendly, and Kirk felt safe around it. This bear was a friend. 

The bear licked his face, _ewww._ Kirk pushed it back. “I-Chaya,” the young Kirk said, “That is not appropriate.” I-Chaya seemed to purr as Kirk put his hand in his never-ending brown fur. He pulled himself up with I-Chaya’s help and mounted on his back. 

I-Chaya’s fur was dense and thick, thick enough to hold on to in the absence of a harness. Kirk felt so small compared to him, his hands doubly so. The familiar fields - no, dessert sand? Yes, it was sand - Stretched out for a far as either of them could see. The sky did the same in brilliant light blue – no, no. it was red. An orangery red, lighter than the sand. Why did he think it was blue? That’s just silly. Kirk had clearly just been dreaming too much and now his mind was clouded with the visions. 

Kirk and I-Chaya made their way into the town. There was an area designed solely for foot traffic, and today that space was being used as local a produce market. There was lots of food for sale, as well as handmade clothing and other such trinkets. Kirk saw that one of the tables was selling some kind of root vegetable displayed in glass containers and directed I-Chaya to it, dismounting the creature once he got there. I-Chaya stood by on the lookout for trouble but did not cause any himself. 

The merchant behind the pop-up stall looked down at him. “You’re Franks’ boy,” he said in a very matter-of-fact sort of way. 

“That is correct,” Kirk replied. 

“How much are you here to purchase?” 

“A single portion for myself,” Kirk said, taking out the exact amount of the coined currency that was needed from a small wallet that was attached to his belt. The money was in square-shaped coins with holes in the middle. 

The merchant served just that in a wax paper bag, leaving one of the roots out at the top for easy consumption. 

“Thank you,” Kirk said with a bow as he took a bite of the elevated root. 

“Live long and proposer.” The merchant said with a straight-handed salute to his head.

“Peace and long life,” Kirk replied, mirroring the action. 

Soon after, I-Chaya and Kirk found themselves walking together through the market with Kirk snacking on the root. It was sweeter than what Kirk was used to eating and filled him up well. I-Chaya sniffed the root, but wasn’t interested in trying any for himself. 

In the entrance to one of the alleyways that was connected to the market was a small group of boys – boys that Kirk could recognize as being from his class at school. They were playing on tiled circles on the floor with colourful glass marbles. Kirk knew that he was rather proficient in the game, _perhaps he could join? Or at the very least be a part of the audience. _

I-Chaya followed him to where the other boys were playing and sat a small distance behind Kirk as he tried to watch from a gap. The boys made a very clear effort to block Kirk’s view of the game. Kirk tried again. 

“Go away, we don’t want you here.” One of them said as he took a shot. 

Kirk was confused at the reaction. “Um-“

“We don’t want _aliens_ playing with us,” said another one of the boys. 

“I am not an alien,” Kirk replied. 

“But you’re not a real Vulcan, and even if you wanted to be,” the first boy with a happy snarl. What he was saying seemed to give him satisfaction. 

Kirk bit down on his lip. “That is not true. My father-“

“Your father brought shame to Vulcan,” The child interjected. “He married a Romulan outside of his own bonds, a traitorous off-worlder – and he doesn’t even have anything good to show for it. He is nothing more than a traitor to our kind.” 

_Wow, an articulate little shit, isn’t he? _

One of the boys in the group pushed Kirk into the dirt before Kirk could finish what he was saying. “You’re just a freak! An emotional alien!” he said, almost with a laugh. 

Kirk didn’t have a retort towards that, he knew they were right. Without thinking anymore more about it, Kirk lunged forward, punching the first boy as hard as he could in the mouth. The other went to catch the tiny fist by the time it came for the second punch, but that didn’t stop Kirk from kicking with his legs instead. 

The people who had been watching the altercation stopped watching after that. As far as they were concerned, nothing was happening. 

I-Chaya whimpered and pulled Kirk away from the fight by the back of his high collar, the end of one of his large sabre-fangs digging deeply into his shoulder. Kirk pulled away from I-Chaya, ready to attack again. 

“Freak!”

“I am _not!_ I am just as Vulcan as you are,” Kirk said with tears starting to form. 

“Prove it.” 

At that moment a hand came forward, cutting Kirk off from the fight. Kirk followed the arm up to it’s owner. 

_Fucking hell. Guess who’s decided to finally show up._

Frank took Kirk’s own outstretched arm and pulled him away from the confrontation. He dismissed the bullies with a wave of his hand. Kirk took himself away from the man’s grasp and stood himself up. “Father-“

“You have no reason to act in such an emotional matter,” Frank said sternly, avoiding Kirk’s eyes. 

“But-“

“We are heading home now.” He finished, just as coldly as before. I-Chaya moved to behind Frank.

* * *

The house was inset into a hill, the sandstone acting as a natural insulator from the planet’s extreme temperatures. I-Chaya took to his den that was aside from the main living quarters, keeping his head down and ears back in sodality. Kirk repeatedly called out for his stepfather to let go, but the grip on the back of his tiny wrist only getting stronger as he was dragged into another room. During this Kirk spotted an overgrown potted white Lily plant in the far corner of the room. 

Frank let go. “It is fortunate that I was in the town for other work,” he said as he took his jacket off and hung it over a chair. 

Kirk forced himself to speak, to defend himself. “Father-”

“Do not speak over me,” Frank replied. “Your actions today have no justification.” 

Kirk bit his lip. “I was hit first.”

“You still retaliated,” Frank said. “Being Vulcan means following disciplines and philosophies that are difficult and demanding of both the mind and body, not fighting the first child who tries to insult you. You are better than that sort of behaviour and I want you to showcase it. 

You are constantly displaying your irrational and erratic emotions, and today’s instance has not been the only one of late that I know about. They need to cease immediately.”

_“myesfatha.”_ Kirk mumbled towards the floor. 

“Speak clearly.”

_“Yes,_ father,” Kirk said, not wanting to dignify the lecture with eye contact.

Frank seemed to find that an acceptable response.

Kirk backed off, afraid of the man before him. “It is not just me,” he commented, needing the last word, “Sam has had his own emotional interactions in the past.” 

“Samuel is already enough of a disappointment as he is, and his being dealt with as it needs to be,” his stepfather explained. “I will not allow you to follow in his path. You have seen what will become of him and I can hope that you have learnt from it.” There was a bitterness in his voice. Regret, maybe? 

"Yeah, but Sam isn’t a freak like I am." Kirk mumbled under his breath. 

“If you are to speak to me, then speak.” His father commanded. “I will not accept such mumbling in this house.” 

“They called me a freak,” Jim admitted quickly, just quiet enough not to be heard. 

“Speak.”

“They called me a freak and you a traitor!” Kirk practically shouted. He could feel the rage radiate from inside of him. 

His father didn’t seem to change. “These words should not have an effect on you. You have overreacted.”

“Aren’t I, though?” Kirk asked.

“No,” Frank said sternly before turning back to his work. 

Kirk didn’t like that answer. He knew that he was. “I’m not a Vulcan. I know that I am not!”

“Being Vulcan is not a matter of genetics, it is a matter of dedication to our way of life and the willingness to do so. You are simply behind of your studies – and that is not a factor of your breeding.” His father explained. 

_Bullshit. _

The room seemed to grow cold. As his attention seemed to be drawn by something, Sarek’s entire demeanour seemed to change, but the emotions attached to him didn’t. “Do you think I enjoy any this?” He said, looking down at Spock. “Do you think I like having to be dragged around some trouble making brat with nothing better to do than to get into fights with every other little shit that he comes across and calls him names?”

Spock didn’t reply. 

“I’m not doing this for me, ya’know. I didn’t sign up for this. If your mother would step up for once in her life and deal with you then I wouldn’t have to.” Sarek exhaled. “Is it really that hard just to keep in line for once? Whatcha planning next? Huh? Will you need me to drag you out of prison next week? Because I’m not gonnna.” 

_Mother? That wasn’t right. It was only his father that was present. That was incorrect._

And just like that, Frank seemed to snap back into the picture as the lighting in the room went back to its usual warm.“You will continue those studies now, and I will not be hearing any more objections.”

Kirk came to a portrait-oriented full-height mirror next to a door. The reflection in the window was thin and dressed in black, everything was different from what he usually saw in one. A pale green fist came up and smashed it. Dozens of him, not, no this was Spock. Spock was a child – he couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9 years old. 

There was a green substance on his knuckles. This wasn’t the right green, it was too dark and cloudy. Everybody else had normal light green blood, why was he the lone exception to this?

With eyes full of angry tears and tiny fists tightly bundled up, Spock punched the mirror again.


	5. Militarily School Dropout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna split this chapter in half 'cause it's almost twice as long than normal but like, ehhhhh the best split that I could find would leave a chapter with 800-ish words and that's just annoying. Plus, I already did that with chapter 4. The title of 4 is better suited for this one tbh. 
> 
> Content warning for mild use of homophobic slurs (used as slurs in context) in the first half.

The night was cold and the lights had all been switched off hours ago.

Skin was on skin, a thin white sheet-like excuse for a blanket over them. Spock took a deep breath in through his nose; the other man in the bed beside him was all that he could feel and smell. If Spock had been told their pulses had been at the same speed right there and then, he would have absolutely believed it.

Spock’s hand was around the other’s body and his face was getting lost in thick ginger hair. Was it ginger? Yes, yes it was. Spock would never be able to forget it. A knot was gentled pulled out, the owner of the hair turned around slightly and looked back at him briefly. Salok gave him a soft smile before snuggling in closer with his eyes closed, being careful not to make the dorm room cot squeak as he did it.

Spock yawned.

“You should go off to bed,” Salok said quietly.

“I don’t wanna,” Spock mumbled in response. “I wanna stay here.”

“I want you to stay, too.”

“Tomorrow night?” Salok said softly into Spock’s ear.

“I would like that very much,” Spock said in response. He didn’t want to leave the bed, but he knew he had to.

Spock finally gathered the strength to leave the bed and picked up his shirt from the floor, pulling it over himself and exited out of the open dorm window. His own cot was a few complexes down and was as cold as the night air that he had to walk through to get back to it. It couldn’t have been more than an hour or so before dawn. It was already ‘tomorrow.’

For some reason that he still couldn’t explain, Spock stopped as he walked and just sort of looked at the stars and moon. There was a good deal of light pollution as there was, but it was a lot less than in a town or city. The moon seemed larger than it usually was, beckoning him towards it.

It all seemed… different somehow. _It was impossible for them to have changed since he had last looked, he was just in need of sleep._

A flashlight caught his eye. “You! Stop!” the officer who had it in his hands called out as he spotted Spock. Spock just sprinted from where he was standing, zig-zagging between complexes until he jumped back into his own through its open window and practically threw himself into his cot, wrapping himself up tightly in his blanket and closing his eyes just as tight.

A few seconds of painful quiet later, the door was kicked open, the lights flicked on in the same moment. Spock didn’t move, but the other boys who he shared the compound with stirred.

“What the fuck, man,” the one above him said as he slowly woke up. Another one just swore and threw (and then missed) a pillow at the light switch to try and turn it back off. Spock peeked out of his blanket to show that he was ‘now’ awake. The officer locked eyes with him and pulled him out of his bed by the front of his collar.

“_Umgh_,” was the best Spock could say as he stood up, the hand still there, “What the hell is wrong? What did I do?”

“You’re as bad of a liar as you are at playing innocent, _Xtmprsqzntwlfd_.” The guard said.

Spock stood his ground. Well, of the ground he could reach, that was. “Sir, please- “

The guard’s grip loosened up, allowing Spock to fix his shirt and stand at attention. It had sure been a while since his heart rate had been this fast.

“Dismissed for now, you’ll be spoken to in the morning,” the guard finished before leaving. The rest of the dorm didn’t seem to care for what was going on, aside from the fact that they were happy the light was switched back off as he left. Spock didn’t sleep for the rest of the morning; the tight knots in his stomach was enough to prevent any of it.

* * *

Kirk was walking down the academy corridors, keeping track of every plaque besides the doors and what they lead into. He held his data PADDs close to his body and kept to himself. The outside halls had a hot draft breezing through them, but Kirk didn’t loosen his clothing to allow himself to better cool off. This was not the place to do such a thing.

Walking behind him was a classmate of his, and it didn’t take much for him to catch up to Kirk. He knew that student, his name was MacIntyre. MacIntyre came up close to him, needing to stand on his toes to speak to Kirks’ ear. “I have a working theory that your mother was not a Romulan: she was just listed as one so you would be able to enlist here.”

Kirk kept on walking.

MacIntyre kept at it. “Your ears are 2.45 plex shorter than the average of your father’s phenotype,” he explained. “And have you ever been made aware of how much rounder your face and arch of your eyebrows are? Romulans generally have further exemplified features, not nullified ones. I know that it’s a lie.”

Kirk made eye contact with another student, but she quickly looked away as to not get involved.

“You know what? I bet you’re part Klingon and those extra cranial ridges are simply a recessive trait. Is your father that much of a sexual deviant? Or perhaps she was a Tellarite? She certainly would have looked the pa-“

And with that, Kirk took a single fist to Macintyre’s face. MacIntyre fell to the floor, a small trickle of green blood leaking out of forehead. He did not make a sound that indicated pain when hit, but the textbooks that he had been carrying were cast across the tiled floor.

The students that had been around them stopped where they were and looked at both Macintyre and Kirk. It took another solid 12.43 seconds before one of the onlookers finally ran over to see if MacIntyre was still alive. “He is still respiring,” She reported, putting a hand to feel the pulse on his neck. The tension in the room only mildly subsided.

Kirk never stepped foot into the VSA after that.

* * *

The daylight came a lot faster than it usually did. The morning roll call before breakfast didn’t want to come. Except that it did, and Spock wished more than anything that it didn’t. Uniforms were neat and the young men inside of them only barely neater. The governing Sergeant was usually the man who gave the morning drills and rundowns, so there wasn’t all that much of a difference there. What was different, however, was what he started the day off with.

“I’m going to keep this brief because I assumed that I wouldn’t have needed to say anything about this, but here I am.” His usual pacing stopped. “I’ve gotten reports of certain kids sneaking in and out of their beds in the night-“

Spock could pretty much feel the other cadets hold in a ‘woo’ of boyhood support.

“- _visiting_ each other.”

The collective ‘woo’ very quickly subsided.

“And, I’ve heard a pretty good report as to the two that it might be,” The Sergeant said as he walked up to where Salok was standing in the front row- only 5 or 6 guys down from Kirk.

Salok seemed to freeze. “It was Spock,” he reported, the pressure quickly breaking him in half like a toothpick. “It was all him.”

Spock looked back at him. He didn’t know what to feel, but ‘betrayal’ wasn’t quite it. It was something more. The Sargent looked back at Spock. Spock just stood his ground, keeping his eyes forward and body stiff.

There was a soft smile before the sergeant made his way down the like to Spock. “Was it?”

Spock had two choices here, but Salok had already taken the first from him. “Whatever you are accusing us of, it has not happened.”

The Sergeant just looked at him, not believing a single word.

“….. Sir.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”

_Yes. It would appear very much so._

“No Sir.”

“Get out,” the sergeant very calmly ordered.

Spock stood his ground. “Sir-“

“Get out,” the order was repeated.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Spock said, almost begging to shake.

The sergeant walked in closer. “Really? What are you playing at here? Do you really think that we want some _queer_ running around under us?”

Spock blinked and looked at the man before him. Slightly taller and very rugged. He had gotten wounded and now instead of being able to fight he had been put back to train more people to go off to a foreign country to become just as broken. “I’m not,” Spock said, “I’m honestly not.”

“Whatcha trying to do here, kid? Avoid the draft? Infect the rest of these boys with whatever the fuck is wrong with you?”

Spock looked to Salok for some sort of help, but Salok wasn’t going to give it. He was looking directly ahead with his hands behind his back, afraid to do anything more. Spock looked back at the sergeant and sighed. He had clearly made up his mind. “Ya know what, sir? Sure,” he said with a smile, knowing full well that he could only fail up.

Spock didn’t remember much else of that day, other than that he ended it with leaving with a black eye, a jacket that didn’t belong to him, and a report going directly to his Father back home. A report that Spock thankfully knew wasn't going to get read any time soon.

* * *

Kirk now found himself in an elevator. _No wait, actually, wait yeah this was just an elevator he was right._ Kirk felt like he had just been snapped sober with a punch to the face. The underlying feeling of anger he had been feeling during this whole, what? Experience? May be gone, but there was nothing there to replace it. It was like a void.

The elevator ride was long, the whirr of the machines all around him was distractingly loud. The small room itself was warm and the air was dry. Kirk fixed his high collar and rolled his sleeve back down. He was sweating more than usual again - he calculated that would have to lower the temperature of his quarters by at least 12.45% once he was assigned one.

Kirk looked down at his hands. _Were they his hands?_ He couldn’t really tell. His uniform was his former cadet one, he knew that for sure. Kirk looked to the mirror to the side and almost jumped.

It was Spock looking back at him. Much older this time – he looked like a cleaner version of the Spock that he already knew. His clothing was all nice and presentable, but it was all definitely Spock. Said clothing was different from the one Kirk was in and seemed like a nicer version of Spock’s clothing.

Kirk brought his hand up, but the Spock in the mirror had trouble following. It was like looking at a double exposure of a photograph after a few moments of this became clear to him what was going on. Kirk was seeing Spock’s memories. More than seeing, he was _living_ them.

_Okay, that’s pretty cool._

The lift stopped on an observation level and Kirk made his way to a lounge with a large window facing the outside. By the window there was a woman in uniform that had been waiting for him. Her hair was black and tied up, her hands behind her back. She saw Kirk come in, and saluted. “You are late.”

“Our shuttle took 1.342% of a cycle longer than was predicted. We had to avoid a primate orbital telescope that may have detect our ship,” Kirk explained.

“Was the ship not cloaked?” the woman asked.

“Negative, but without full knowledge of what the natives are capable of recording it was considered not a worthwhile risk to take.”

The woman seemed to quietly nod at that. She looked back at the planet before them.

It wasn’t like something that Kirk had ever seen before. The whole planet was blue and green, with white clouds covering in places. There was a cyclone forming on the lower hemisphere by a large coastal island. The planet was honestly breathtaking, for lack of a better word. Kirk couldn’t take his eyes away from it. It felt, safe. It felt like it was home. _Had he seen it before?_ Kirk felt like he had, but knew he hadn’t.

_No, that was silly, he was on that planet right now. It was the only planet that he knew._

“Are you up to date with all the information of the mission?” The woman asked, not looking back at Kirk.

“I was briefed 6.54 native day cycles ago,” Kirk said.

“The mission has not changed.”

Kirk nodded.

“Recite it.”

“Observation mission of the native population as they perform an expedition to their natural satellite,” Kirk explained, “mission began 3.4 native solar cycles ago as observational drones, and 0.8 as manned observation. Current operation is to record both the landing and the transmissions from said landing. After landing and return to planet manned observation will continue for 2.4 native day cycles before automotive observation for another 1 complete native solar cycle.”

“And what is your mission personally?”

“I am here on behalf of my father for cultural research of the native inhabitants.”

The woman seemed displeased and looked back at the planet below. “Understood. There are an excessive number of officers already tasked with that assignment, you will not be needed.”

Kirk looked back at her, almost offended. “Commander-”

“Dismissed.”

“I have also studied the effect of a natural satellite on oceanic tides as per in effect on Sol-3, as well as submitted detailed reports on a small selection of already reported flora. Perhaps I can better put my own knowledge to use in those departments?”

“You are not needed to be of service and your insistence is not warranted. When the mission has desisted you can be tasked with reporting key cultural findings to the relevant academia boards.”

Kirk could feel anger rise back up from inside of himself. “Then why was I brought here? Just to deliver an assortment of reports?”

The woman looked back, her face was quite. Kirk felt as if he was falling. “You have been given a chance to redeem yourself after your actions,” she said coldly. “It was not my decision to allow it, but I strongly suggest that you take it.”

  
Kirk walked down the empty hallway. It had enough of a curve to it that made him feel like he had been walking around in one big circle. He knew perfectly well that there was nothing to be annoyed about, but, _fuck_, he could feel it. He had worked so hard to get here, and what was he? A token. He was there to be babysat at the very best. He wasn’t good for anything else it seemed. _Look at us! We’re Vulcans! We don’t see ourselves as cultural and biological superiors! Look at Jimmy over there! He’s an alien freak just like you all are and we still kept him around as if he was one of our own!_

Illogical thoughts, perhaps. It didn’t change the fact that that was how it still felt in effect.

Kirk looked out a window. Spock was looking back at him. He didn’t like this version of Spock. This Spock was tied, this Spock just wanted to go home, and he wanted I-Chaya again. Spock put his head on the window, dark hair being crushed between his head and the window. The vision of the Earth came into view, the planet loomed over as it almost mocked him.

Kirk could feel that falling feeling again, but instead of just having it in his gut the world seemed to get smaller and smaller. Everything got hotter and hotter _– ow. No, stop, ow._ The pain was in his head, where his temples were.

Kirk gasped and pulled back, severing the bond. He almost fell off the couch as he tried to get his bearings back. The setting of the window vanished and was replaced with his childhood home, where he really was right now. Somehow the house felt worse.

Kirk stood up, making sure to get good distance between the two of them. He began to pace around. “Holy shit, you - you really are an alien,” Kirk said, almost with a forced laugh. “Like, from another planet and everything. You’re – like - a scientist? Right? Or trying to be one? Here to watch the moon landing?”

Spock was blushing hard and green. He brought a hand to his mouth and bit down on the knuckle of the index finger. He was making sure to make as little eye contact with Kirk as possible.

“I wasn’t meant to see that first one, was I?” Kirk asked softly. “With the bear thing? Was that one from me or you?” _That was all from Spock, right? This was just a one way thing?_

_Right?_

Spock clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Kirk went back to the couch, crouching by Spock’s knee and putting a hand on it. The fabric was cool and soft, but it was a thick as denim.

“That man,” Kirk said as he began to scan for the row of family photos on the top of the fireplace, “I hate that guy.” There was a black and white family photo that included a very young Kirk that he stooped and picked up to show Spock. “We got this taken back when he married my Mom when she was still around - that’s why she’s in that nice dress and Sam and I are in suits.”

Spock studied the photo, but refused to touch it.

Kirk poked the bit of glass that sat before the image of his younger self. “Jim,” he explained. “Sam, Winona, and _Frank_.” He didn’t say ‘Frank’ in a good light.

Spock dug into the inside of his coat and pulled out a small white disk. He flicked it around and a blue, semi-transparent view of a family portrait came up. It wasn’t quite like a photo, more like a collection of dolls.

It was a 3d hologram, to give a clearer mental image. Blue and slightly transparent, but a hologram regardless. There was a woman with a scarf around her head sitting down, an adult man, and a younger child. All three of them were the same race as Spock, and the woman was very clearly quite pregnant. Kirk felt like he already knew who the man and boy were.

Kirk was mystified at the hologram. “Is that you?” he asked, pointing at the boy. “Spock?”

Spock slowly shook his head and pointed to the stomach of the woman, his finger just slightly clipping into it when it happened. Spock then moved device back to himself, did something to it, and then brought up another image. The same man was there, but in different clothing and looking slightly older, his hair starting to grey. There was a teenager to his side, and a younger child standing before the man. “Spock,” he said quietly, pointing to the young child. The Spock in the photo seemed to be around the same age as the one Kirk had seen in the vision, perhaps a year or two younger. All of the subjects had blank, formal expressions on their faces as if they should have been taken 100 years ago.

“Spock, Sybok, Sarek,” He explained in the same way that Kirk had introduced his own family.

Kirk mined a scarf around his head and a mound over his stomach. “What about her? Was she your Mom?”

Spock flicked back to the first photo. “Ama-da.” He said solemnly. The name didn’t seem to sit right in his mouth, it clearly wasn’t in the same language as what he was used to talking in. “Au nam-tor ri rish-tor.”

_At some point, Spock had lost his mother - that alone was clear. So what was so horribly wrong about her for Spock to be bullied about? A foreigner from another part of his planet? Another planet entirely? She didn’t look any different from the others in his family, so it couldn’t have been that bad._

_But I guess, if that shit is bad on Earth even now then who knows what it might be like when aliens are added into the mix._

Kirk put down the frame. “Hey, I lost my father, my real father, when I was a baby if it helps. He was shot down while flying.” Kirk began to explain as went over to fish out an old photo of George Kirk in uniform from an over-filled draw. It was the last one they had of him. “He was named George.”

Spock looked at the photo. It was clear to him that it wasn’t the human he had seen in their shared vision.

“After he was gone my Mom then married Frank. He’s a dick, so I guess we have that in common.”

Something inside of Kirk wished that whatever had happened would have caused them to now be able to understand each other, but that clearly wasn’t going to be the case. “Amanda, Winnoa, Mom.” He gave Spock the terminology, it was on the topic of the conversation. “Sarek, George, Dad. Frank is my step-dad.”

“Ama-da, Wino-a, Ko-mekh. Sarek, Geh-orge, sa-mekh.”

Pretty soon they would both need to keep lists of every new word that they had learnt. “And I guess Sam and Sybok are our older brothers. Brother.”

“Sybok, Samu, sa-kai.”

“Yaknow, I think if we’re going to keep swapping words like this, we should find better words to swap,” Kirk said with a soft smile.

“Nemaiyo na' nem-tor ish-veh wak na' nash-veh,” Spock replied softly.

“My sentiment exactly, Spock.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A good ‘first contact au’ question that always comes up is ‘is Amanda there? Is she a human?’. My answer in this one is ‘yeah, but you won’t like it.’
> 
> > Spock flicked back to the first photo. “Ama-da.” He said solemnly. The name didn’t seem to sit right in his mouth, it clearly wasn’t in the same language as what he was used to talking in. _“[[she] is no longer/not alive.]”_
> 
> > “Ama-da, Wino-a, _[mother]._ Sarek, Geh-orge, _[father.]”_ / “Sybok, Samu, _[brother.]_”
> 
> > _"[Thank you for taking your time with me,]”_ Spock replied softly.


	6. 5 in 1 Shampoo

[…]

R: “This episode of ‘Planet 3’ has been sponsored by Tiviea. We all know how important personal grooming is, I do it-

G: “-And so do I.”

R: “We all do what we can to stay nice and tidy. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to keep it up - oh no. we all say to ourselves that we are going to start with fancy routines but by the end of the week we’re back to using a 5 in 1 shampoo and claiming that we’re going to try and get a beard instead of shaving. Not anymore my friends.

With Tiviea they send the products right to you and have a wild arrangement of subscription boxes to choose from. I personally have been using their ‘colour and face’ kit for the last couple of months. This gives me some of the best hair care products from their colour-safe shampoo, self-apply liquid masks to give me clear skin and I’ve also added razor blades to my pack for pretty much nothing extra.”

G: “Use the code ‘Planet360’ for 60% of your first three boxes with no lock-in contracts. That’s ‘P-L-A-N-E-T and then numbers 3, 6 and then a 0.”

R (slightly muffled): That was good right?

G (just as muffled): Yeah, that’s good. We’ve said what we needed to say.

[…]

* * *

Kirk and Spock found themselves alone in the living room. A frog outside somewhere croaked.

Kirk looked back at Spock. “Can I clean you up?” he asked, motioning the act of washing your arms with an invisible Sponge. “You look like a mess.” He moved close to pick up Spock’s large sleeve. Spock moved back out of the way as Kirk approached.

Kirk looked at the half died blood that had picked up on his fingers. He knew that it was blood, but seeing it all green like this didn’t make it seem real.

Kirk tugged on Spock’s sleeve again, getting him to stand up. Kirk then directed the both of them towards the downstairs bathroom, Spock following closely behind. Kirk went inside and Spock leaned over and watched as best as he could as Kirk did something in the sink.

A few moments later Kirk turned around, his hands now clean and slightly damp. “Clean,” he said with them up. “Clean Spock?"

Spock looked up at Kirk’s face and arms. Kirk’s face had also been cleaned of all the mud he had on him. Spock seemed almost transfixed about it _\- studding it, maybe? Studying his face?_ He then looked at his own hands and replied quietly. “Yes.”

The bathroom itself really wasn’t all that impressive. There was a bathtub with a curtain and wall-mounted showerhead, a toilet, and a small sink. It had all hardly been touched since the house had been built, and the only difference between this one and the upstairs one was that the upstairs one was slightly bigger. Kirk ran the water over his hands again, shook it off and then dried them off with a towel that was on a rack on the wall. “See? You can clean yourself off in here.”

Spock watched all of this from the doorway and then pointed to the shower. “Mashulayek il ralash-mashulayek?” he asked.

Kirk ducked around and turned the water of the shower on. There was a moment of the last of the tea-stained rainwater before the fresh piped water came in.

“Mashulayek,” Spock confirmed. He seemed almost disappointed in that.

“That’s a shower,” Kirk explained as he turned the water off. “It’s pretty much just a big sink that you wash your whole body under. Do you guys have showers?” Without asking for a response Kirk picked up a washcloth from the sink, wring it out, and then handed it to Spock. “Here you go, you can clean yourself up with it now.”

Spock leaned back when the washcloth was put in his face.

Kirk threw the washcloth in the bath and turned the shower back on, making sure it was nice and warm. He then gestured towards it. “Mash-sure-layek?”

Nope.

Kirk half pushed Spock out of the way so he could leave the bathroom. “Mash-sure-layek? Spock Mash-sure-layek? C’mon man, work with me here,” he finished with an exhale.

Spock looked back at the shower, warm steam was starting to gather in the room.

Kirk sighed, went back in, and turned the shower off. “Hey, at least I’m trying here. But you’re still covered in dirt and blood - if that even is blood - and not some sort of weird alien slime.” _Maybe his Kind didn’t really groom themselves like humans? Nah, to get perfect hair like that you would have to spend a lot of time in the mirror. _

Kirk grabbed Spock by the shoulder, the good shoulder, and made him sit on the closed toilet. Spock had no real choice but to comply, sitting down with his back as straight as a babys’. Kirk got the (now) warm washcloth and showed it in use, leaving own his face soft and warm. He went to use it on Spock, but Spock still seemed rather apprehensive about it. Kirk felt like he was caring for a stay animal. “_Please_ let me help,” he said. “You look like a total mess.”

Spock accepted his new fate and let Kirk clean the worse of it off. It felt like, at least Kirk, like a bit of a lame role reversal. _Sure, Spock could show you his repressed childhood memories, but Kirk? Kirk had a towel and some warm water. _

_Maybe that was all he needed? _

Kirk could feel the faint stings of the water on the cuts on his own skin as he worked, it was quite a strange sensation. He held onto Spock's face as he did it to keep it all stead, and Spock kept his eyes closed. Once Kirk was done with the face he handed Spock a dry towel. Thankfully, Spock clearly knew what the towel was for and patted his face dry. _Much better. _“Your clothes are still a problem, they also need to be cleaned.” Kirk took his own jacket off and wiped down the sleeves of it. “Yeah?”

Spock saw what he did and took off the short black robe. The shirt under it was black, sleeveless, and the collar went up to his Adam’s apple. The bad shoulder was clearly dislocated and was starting to bruise in a dark green colour. Spock had a good amount of body hair on his arms, and it was likely the same for the rest of his body. Spock stood up and went to the sink and put his hand under it as if he was waiting for the water to turn itself on.

Spock looked back to Kirk for help.

Kirk stood up and turned the tap on.

As Spock washed off the robe the water turned a shade of green. Kirk picked up one of the sleeves of the robe that wasn’t under the water and then grimaced slightly. “That’s going to need to be sewn up,” he said.

Spock took the sleeve back, pinched the ripped bits together and rubbed them under the warm stream of water. A few moments later the fabric had somehow repaired itself as if nothing had ever happened.

“Woah,” Kirk said softly as Spock showed off the repair.

Spock nodded and wrung the robe out. Kirk took the towels off the rack and presented it to him, but Spock did not seem to acknowledge it. “Sai-vel ralash-mashulayek?” He asked.

“You can have a shower, a Mash-sure-layek, yes.” Kirk said as he gestured to the shower with a smile. He put the rank-wrung towels on a pile on the floor.

Somehow, that was the wrong response.

“I don’t know what a ‘Ralash’ is, sorry.” _Did ‘Ralash’ mean ‘hot’? Did they have some other kind of liquid they used? Did they even use liquid to clean? Was ‘Ralash’ their word for ‘clothing?’_

Spock hung the repaired robe over the towel rack to dry off. “Tra' nam-tor ni mau masu, tra' nam-tor rai Ralash-mashulayek nam-tor is-tor,” he muttered to himself.

Kirk put his hand on Spock’s bad shoulder and smiled, and half a second later his shoulder had been snapped back into place. Spock had yelped in pain as he turned to face Kirk, reaching for the shoulder in defence. By the time Spock had figured out what had just happened at Kirk was turning the shower back on. 

“Spock, Mash-sure-layek, clean.” Kirk ordered as he left and closed the door just enough to both give privacy and show that the door wasn’t locked. “I’ll go and get something to help with your arm,” he finished with a yell as he was already halfway up the stairs.

* * *

Kirk ran up to George’s room and fished through his clothing, and it wasn’t like he was here to tell him off from it. For the time being, he was free to do whatever he wanted with it all. The rough thinking here was that the bigger clothing would be nicer to wear for somebody who was used to lose stuff. He also skirted past the master bedroom and took an old silk scarf off a dusty hat rack. Spock was going to need a sling, and it was the best that he could offer right now.

_They really needed to put a first aid kit somewhere_, Kirk thought. _What kind of first aid do aliens have? Hopefully better than whatever they had on Earth, that’s for sure._

In the hallway, Kirk passed hung photos of Kirk’s long past. He only stopped and looked at one or two of them for a moment or two before going back downstairs.

* * *

By the time Kirk had made his way back downstairs the shower had already been turned off. Kirk knocked on the door and was greeted by a wet Spock who had covered himself two of the towels. One towel was around his waist like one normally would be and the other was around him like a shawl. Kirk smiled at this, it was good to know that Spock had finally taken the hint. His exposed skin was also flustered from the heat, his chest and face going all green from the heat.

Kirk was also right about the body hair.

Spock seemed to be confused as to what was so amusing before he dried his hair with yet another towel. As soon as he took the towel away from his hair dramatically floofed up. Kirk laughed at the sight.

Kirk scooted into the bathroom and picked out a comb from a cup that usually held toothbrushes, mimed the action of brushing his hair, and then gave the comb to Spock. Spock fixed down his black bowl cut in the mirror, the straight hair falling so neatly on his head it looked almost like a wig.

Kirk then gave the spare clothing (minus the scarf) to Spock with a smile, their fingers touching as the folded-up pile was exchanged. Kirk left again and waited outside.

Spock emerged a minute or so later, the shirt was around backwards and the pants fly undone. Kirk gave him a smile, “You look good,” he said.

Spock seemed indifferent and closed the bathroom door behind him as he left.

“Here,” Kirk said as he showed the sling that had been made out of the scarf in use on himself. “It’s for your arm. I can’t really do much to help right now, but this should help at least a little. See?”

“Nam-tor nash hasuk?” Spock asked as he eyed all of it in use. 

“It's called a sling,” Kirk informed as he took the scarf off. “It will help with your shoulder.” Kirk pointed to his own shoulder, “Shoulder.” He then went to put the sling on Spock, but Spock still seemed very iffy about it. “It’s to help, I’m not going to hurt you,” Kirk assured.

Lifting the arm up to put the homemade sling wasn’t the most pleasurable thing to do, but Spock could figure out fast enough that it was something good to do.

A stripped backwards polo shirt, baggy pants, bare feet, and a homemade sling. Kirk just wished that he hadn’t taken away _all _of Spock’s dignity. Spock seemed to be able to tell what Kirk was thinking, and put his arms out in a very lacklustre ‘tad da’ motion.

“Your stuff should be dry in the morning, we can just put it on the line if not,” Kirk said as he began to walk away. After a few steps, he stopped and looked back behind him. “C’mon, Spock.”

Spock fixed his collar and followed Kirk to wherever he was being taken too next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > Spock watched all of this from the doorway and then pointed to the shower. “[[water] shower or [sonic] shower?]” he asked. 
> 
> > Spock hung the repaired robe over the towel rack to dry off. “[There is so much water. There is no [sonic] shower in use,]” he muttered to himself. (it’s meant to be like, ‘there is so much water, it’s is no wonder you use water to clean.’)
> 
> > “[This this medical]?” Spock asked as he eyed all of it in use.


	7. All The Help That You Need

Now that Spock was all cleaned up, Kirk came to the conclusion that the best thing to do next would be to sleep. He sure as hell needed it, and assumed Spock would benefit from it as well. He guided Spock up to his own bed, the sheets having already being replaced only a few hours before. 

Kirk showed Spock the bed and pulled back the blanket. “You should sleep now,” he said before yawning, “You’ll need it.” 

With a nod and a smile, Kirk left to go and sleep somewhere else, but was caught on his way out. 

“J-im. Nam-tor k' nash-veh,” Spock asked, holding tightly onto the end of Kirk’s sleeve. 

Kirk could feel a wave of concern, no, fear, over from generating from the point of contact. “What’s wrong?” 

Spock didn’t have the right words in English to articulate what he could have said in return. “J-Im,” he said again. 

Kirk went over and sat on the side of the bed with a little bit of a bounce. “See? It’s not going to hurt you.”

Spock joined at the other end, sitting crossed-legged like he had done on the couch. 

Kirk swirled around so he too would be crossed-legged and facing the other man in the same way. “What happens now?” He asked softly. 

Spock took a slow breath in. “Wh'ltri,” he said in response as if he knew what the question had been, looking back at Kirk, “Tor du wh’ltri?” 

Kirk bounced a little bit on the bed again, making it squeak. “Yes, I see,” he said, looking down at his own crossed legs. 

Spock closed his eyes as his breathing began to slow. Kirk shrugged and did the same, every-so-often opening an eye back at Spock to make sure he was still doing it. Spock was. 

Was this how his people slept? Should he mention that this wasn’t how Kirk did it? Would that be rude? Eventually, Kirk exhaled and went to leave, but Spock’s hand came up and pulled him back down. 

The two stayed facing each other for quite some time, Kirk wouldn’t be able to tell you how long they were there before he fell dead asleep. It had been quite an eventful day. 

* * *

A while later into the night, and it didn’t really matter how long, Spock stopped his meditation and got off the bed. Jim was still sleeping on it, now splayed out with his arms and legs all over the place. His shirt had rolled up. He was hairless on his stomach; interesting. 

Spock looked at the alien before him for a little longer than he really should have. It had occurred to him, perhaps a little too late, that Humans could not shield. He could then deduct that that they weren’t at all telepathic. Even if these people were the same as he was, their mental frequencies would have to have been completely different to allow cross-interaction aside from a basic mild meld.

Regardless, this species still appeared to have no way to shield their emotions and mind. It was almost overwhelming being around Jim like he had been, the happiness and frustration he had felt during their short time together as they tried to communicate was almost contagious. The smallest victory flooded out of him: it was a wonder how any of the natives were sane at this point. 

Well, they weren’t really, almost all records of their culture and cultural profiles showed that they were anything but. 

Spock walked over and looked out of the second-story window. He could see a glow in one of the distant produce fields on the horizon. He assumed an oxygen fire to be the most logical source. _A fire that he had caused. Fuck. This entire thing was his fault and now he had roped in a native and whoever was in care of the land and vegetation he had most likely ruined. _

In another direction was a different glow, a uniform one of a more consecrated civilization, likely a small city or town. He opened the window, the warm air filled the room. Spock looked back at the sleeping Jim, half climbed out, and then came back in. The cold of the night wasn’t nearly as cold as the nights on Vulcan, the atmosphere was thicker here, and it made sense. 

Spock looked at the distant crop fire again and began to think over the events of the last hour. It almost felt like a dream - it was far too well executed. He had been immediately discovered by a native, one of the worse possible things that could happen. But, what was the first thing that the human had done? He did not react violently as per what Spock had been told that he would, he instead helped. His first reaction to Spock’s appearance before him was to take him out of the burring of the ship and to his own living quarters far away from the fire, not even knowing if Spock was another one of his own kind and not thinking of anything else. 

In the heat of that moment, Jim’s emotions got to him before Jim himself did. The aura was of frustration, but not one of anger, but one of impending doom. All that Jim wanted to do was save him. It was strong enough to throw Spock out of his already quite compromised rhythm. 

Humans were rather social creatures, perhaps they valued the lives of other life forms around them more than their own? It did not seem like a logical risk to take, but there was still its own logic to it. Spock wanted to fault the action, but it was an understandable one. Jim would have no knowledge that the ship had his communication and more than adequate medical equipment inside, all he would have known was that Spock was in trouble and that he had to do something. 

He just had to hope to himself that all of his equipment was able to survive both the fuel fire and the fire of the vegetation. 

Spock walked back to where Jim was sleeping with a soft snore. Highly Vulcanoid in appearance, but his hair was light and thin. His brow ridge was straight and flat – the eyebrows representing that with a soft curve and hair colour that was darker than the hair that on his head. With certain emotions his eyebrows moved in according, much like the early emotions of a child. With no shields or telepathic ability, this species had clearly evolved instead to convey their emotions and intentions with their face and body. Spock had never seen teeth-baring as a sign of anything other than of anger or as a threat, but he simply reminded himself that he was dealing with an alien. 

Jim had also offered Spock a chance to clean himself off, clothing, and somewhere to sleep as if the two of them were already 'packmates.' Maybe this moment in time wouldn’t be so bad. 

The human ear was rather curved. Spock wondered why, that if Human and Vulcans had evolved from a similar mammalian ancestor, if their ancestors had rounded ears instead, or if they had somehow lost the points later on. It was a distinctive trait, and no doubt an attractive one. His face was also rounder and far pinker than his own, as well as being covered with a thin layer of blond stubble around the lower half of his jaw. Jim’s skin was also lightly dotted on the tops of the cheeks and nose. Spock wondered if these small spots were patterning that humans are born with like the Trill or are the end result of exposure to the sun like what you sometimes see on comparatively pale Klingons. 

Spock stopped thinking about Jim’s face and back to the problem at hand. 

The human language, or at least the one that Jim had spoken in, was also rather similarly structured to his own. Jim had attempted to speak in Vulcan, and it was clear that he was capable of leaning and pronouncing it correctly if given the right teachings and ample time to practice. Regardless of this, there was still a lot of him to learn before the two of them would be able to successfully communicate verbally. Jim seemed to talk quite a lot even known that Spock couldn’t understand him, it was all very strange. 

But, for now, the two of them would have to settle for an exchange of emotions and what little words they had been able to exchange. It was strange, Spock had spent his whole life being taught to and practising refusal of his own emotions, but this species seemed to be dependent on them. Would Jim be able to fully comprehend Vulcan – if he was to learn – without being able to hear emotional inflexions in the words?

It would be an interesting experiment at the very least. 

Spock sat down on the end of the bed and lied on it so he was facing Jim directly. Jim was still snoring softly, his eyes twitching under pink eyelids. 

Going against what logic was telling him to do, Spock put a hand to the side of Kirk’s face. A vision of a farm filled Spock’s mind, one in the pink and yellow daylight and growing a plant that Spock did not recognize. It had a green stalk and big leaves, as well as large yellow seed-pod like yellow flowers at the top. They all came up to far above his head. 

Kirk was walking in the field pushing the plants out of the way, his jacket and arms tight around him. Jim didn’t seem to notice that Spock was also there and had begun to follow aside him. Jim wasn’t stressed, he just seemed… distant, for want of a better word. 

The two of them came to a clearing, Jim’s vehicle was there, badly rusted and dented. It also had suffered a rather substantial amount of fire damage. There was another human there, dressed in layered clothing with a thin strip of coloured cloth around his neck. Formal clothing for these people, perhaps? The man was standing on top of the vehicle hitting it with a sleek, metal club-like device. Most likely a melee weapon, but it didn’t seem effective as one. The word ‘bat’ came to mind, Spock didn’t exactly know why. Perhaps it was a word that Jim knew. 

“What are you doing?” Kirk asked as he stepped forward. Kirk didn’t really ‘speak’ here, but his thoughts were all around the situation. “I need that to leave.”

The man hit the vehicle again before looking up. “You have nowhere better to be,” he said with a shrug.

“Yes I do.” 

“You have everything you need right here.” The wind around the plants began to pick up. 

“I don’t,” Jim said weakly. 

“Look harder. You can’t just keep running away forever.” 

“But my ca-“

The man hit the car again, paint chipping up from the impact point. “You know what you’ve done.” 

Jim took a moment or two to respond. “What have I done?” He asked. 

The man looked back at Jim and sighed. “Something bad, kiddo. Something bad. They’ll find out, ya’know. It’s only a matter of time.” 

“Then I need to leave,” Kirk said with his hand out, taking another step into the clearing. 

“Can’t ya hear me?” The man said with a laugh. The car was hit again with a loud ‘thunk.’ “It didn’t work out the first time, that’s how you got into this mess. This really isn’t all that hard to understand.” 

It clearly was. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“I’ve given you the help that you need, use him.” The man slung the bat over his shoulder, wiped his brow, and then looked directly at Spock, clearly annoyed. “Use him.” 

Spock took his hand off from Jim’s face. 

_Ah, Jim had been simply been dreaming. _

Jim stirred in the bed before Spock put his hand back and put Jim back to sleep, this time removing the unpleasant dream from his mind. Jim became far less tense and his whole body relaxed in response. Spock turned to lay on his own back, fixed the crude homemade sling so that he wasn’t lying on the knot, and closed his eyes. 

He felt safe around Jim - that was the main thing right now. It didn’t make much sense, but he knew that this whole mess was going to end up alright in the end. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > “[Jim. [do not] leave me/stay by me,]” Spock asked, holding tightly onto the end of Kirk’s sleeve.
> 
> > Spock took a slow breath in. “[Meditation,]” he said in response as if he knew what the question had been, looking back at Kirk, “[do you meditate?]”


	8. Good Morning

There was only one thing that Kirk noticed when he woke up the next morning, other than the fact that he had fallen asleep with both his boots on and jeans that made for horrible pyjamas: Spock was gone.

Kirk kicked off the bed, trying to see if there was any evidence of Spock. The closest thing that Kirk could see was that the window was wide open, the curtains blowing softly in the wind.

Oh no.

Kirk pretty much fell off the bed and down the stairs, having to catch himself at the bottom. “Spock!?” he called out into the seemly empty house. There was a pause. “SPOCK?!?!”

A black-haired and pointy-eared head pocked out of the corner of the corridor. “J-Im?” Spock replied in a very calm matter.

Kirk didn’t know if he had ever felt relief quite like that before. He smiled and half-jogged over to the living room. “You’re still here, I thought you might have left already,” Kirk said with a smile as he looked at Spock and put a hand on his forearm. Half a second later Kirk’s eyes found their way to the disassembled black and white tv set that took up the floor space of the living room. The coffee table had even been moved out of the way to make for more working space. The book from the night before had been propped up and open so one could look at it as they took apart the house’s electronics as if Spock was studying it as he worked. 

Spock had his clothing from the night before neatly folded up on said coffee table next to the book, as well as a half-drunk glass of water on the other side.

“Well,” Kirk said, accessing the situation, “It was old and shitty anyways, don’t worry too much.” It wasn’t, actually, but it’s too late for that now.

Spock looked down at the carpet.

Kirk walked further into the living room. There also appeared to be the end result of a radio deconstruction spree knitted within the rest of the loose parts – Kirk wasn’t even sure that it had been a radio that they had owned. Everything that was not in use had been very neatly laid out like an illustrated page, the kind you see that show all the different kinds of bugs all together or something.

‘Tetris’ would be the best way to describe it, but since Tetris didn’t exist yet it thus wouldn’t be a concept that Kirk could have drawn a comparison to. You and I can, so that’s why I’m telling you.

Kirk crouched down and looked at the chassis of the tv and what was coming off it. “Trying to contact home, huh? Any luck?” Kirk asked, watching Spock take a slow sip of the water. Spock lifted up his pinky finger as he drunk from the glass.

Kirk took that as a no and stood back up. He almost asked if Spock had already eaten anything, but remembered that there wasn’t anything _too_ eat in the house. He coughed into his hand and fished around for his car keys from his pocket, bringing them out with a chime of the keys hitting each other. “Let’s take you back to your ship,” he said, “Even if it’s all busted up we can still salvage stuff from it that might be useful.”

* * *

[…]

G: “Now, here’s where things start to get interesting. The day after James apparently arrived back in the town, there was what can best be described as a big ‘kaboom’ in the middle of a local farm during the early hours of the night.”<strike></strike>

R: “When the townsfolk asked about what was going on, they were told that a satellite had crashed and they were just keeping it restivive because it had become radioactive in space slash something along that line, but a police statement was issued on the same day was made in regards to two teenagers who had been seen setting fire to a car before fleeing the property at around the same time.”

G: “You see, the police got their info from the guy who owns the property who did not see the ‘crash’ happen, but did hear a bang and see who he assumed to have caused the fire, as well as what he assumed to be a car they that had been blown up – hence why everything was on fire in the first place. This police inquest was quickly dropped the day after it was issued when it was confirmed it was nothing more than a natural phenomenon.”

R: _[Laughter]_ “natural!! [_more laughter, seemingly at the expense at the word ‘natural’ being used_] God, it’s almost like they wanted conspires theorist poking around like that. You can still look up and find the first police report.”

G: “I _know_! Right? The worst kind of thing that you can say in that sort of situation is ‘nothing to see here.’”

[…] 

* * *

“Nothing to see here.” A man in a nice-looking police uniform said, looking at Kirk from tipped down sunglasses that rested on the bridge of his nose. He was an older Caucasian man who looked as he had the remainders of auburn hair cutting though under his hat. The name ‘April’ was printed on a nametag under the badge pinned to his chest.

Spock, now wearing an old baseball cap with his ears tucked into the sides that was hastily put on his head as soon as Kirk saw the officer walk up to them, put his elbow on the window and looked out at the field on the other side - he could recognize a cop on any planet. Kirk had left the house with it on.

The field that Spock had crashed into looked really different in the mid-day light. That, and the collection of huge white tents and government vans that now sat on the field. Neither Kirk nor Spock had really seen all that much of their surroundings the night before, but they were fairly certain that those weren’t there before. At least the fire had been put out – leaving a ring of burnt corn around the confined site.

“What’s happened here?” Kirk asked the officer as nonchalant as he could manage.

The officer gave a bit of a stink eye to Kirk and his passenger. “Satellite crash,” He informed.

“Oh? Really?”

“Yes,” April replied coldly.

“Is it bad?”

“Do you kids have a reason for driving through this area?”

“Uhm,” Kirk said, looking at Spock, Spock looked back. “We’re just heading into town.”

“You will have to go through the main road. Are you two locals?”

“Uh yes. We’re from a few blocks away,” Kirk replied.

April nodded. “Good, good.”

Kirk looked over April’s shoulder. “That’s a lot of tents and people over there.”

April nodded. “It’s USSR property, the government is just being careful with it until they get here.”

Kirk had to take that as that and nodded. They absolutely had a reason to be careful, but man, did they had to have come so quickly? “Alright then, we’ll get out of your hair now.”

“Good,” April said. He didn’t move from where he stood after saying it, and watched Kirk slowly reverse and drive out.

Kirk stopped a block away and grimaced, Spock did one back, but only with his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t really know how to get you to your, ship-thing now.”

“Nash saudau do nam-tor weht rihagik do gishu. Ish-veh V'Kor saudau do ki' vesh' halishau,” Spock informed.

“And now the government is all up in it, so that’s even better.” Kirk sighed and blew a bit of air away from his blond fringe. “Look, I’m sorry Spock but I need to go and get some food. We should be able to get more electronics and parts that you could tinker with, if you wanted.”

“Etek dang fun tor ish-veh ha-kel,” Spock said as Kirk revved the car. “Au nam-tor ri kesik tor men-hil-tor etek kuv etek ri tor tan-tor au wuh utvau nuh'.”

“Right, okay. I know a good tv place in town, we can start there in there. Better than taking apart my set, at least.”

“J-im, nash-veh fam yehat ken-tor du,” Spock said.

“Yeah sorry, Spock, I still don’t have any idea what you’re saying,” Kirk replied before grimacing a little. It’s okay, he can make up for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kirk stopped a block away and grimaced, Spock did one back, but only with his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t really know how to get you to your, ship-thing now.” 
> 
> “[This appears to be more difficult than expected. The local government appears to have been told/informed],” Spock informed. 
> 
> “And now the government is all up in it, so that’s even better.” Kirk sighed and blew a bit of air away from his blond fringe. “Look, I’m sorry Spock but I need to go and get some food. We should be able to get more electronics and parts that you could tinker with, if you wanted.”
> 
> “[We should return to your home],” Spock said as Kirk revved the car. “[they are not likely to investigate us if we do not give them a reason too.]” 
> 
> “Right, okay. I know a good tv place in town, we can start there in there. Better than taking apart my set, at least.” 
> 
> “[JIm, I do not understand you.]” Spock said. 
> 
> “Yeah sorry, Spock, I still don’t have any idea what you’re saying,” Kirk replied before grimacing a little. It’s okay, he can make up for this.


	9. Alien Among us

It really didn’t take all that much travelling time to get to the centre of the town. Kirk found a park on one of the shopping area streets that was before a nice-looking florist and then got out. There wasn’t much to talk about the town itself, It was exactly the same since Kirk was last there and even then it was ‘eh’ at best.

Kirk leaned back into the car, putting his weight onto the open driver’s window. “C’Mon, Mr Spock,” He said gesturing his head outwards, “I wanna keep you close.”

Spock blinked back, unsure as what to do next.

Kirk put his hands up in surrender and began to walk away. “Alright, you can stay in the car and listen to the radio like a little kid if you want. Just don’t drive off.”

Spock got out of the car, closed the passenger door with a click, and fixed up his cap. Kirk just smiled, he really needed something more ‘Spock.’ _A fedora? Beanie? Both would suit him better. _

Spock looked around at the street and then looked at the florist before going right over to it, staring at something inside through the foggy display window.

“Do you get flowers like that where you’re from?” Kirk asked as he walked back to where Spock had gone. It was all so sandy from what he could remember, so maybe not.

Spock didn’t reply, but he did quickly enter the store. Or at least, try to. He stopped before it for a moment, waved his hand up over part of the frame on the top, and then realized that the door had a door handle and came in using that. The name 'Sulu' was written on the door in paint. 

“Spock, wait,” Kirk followed quickly behind him to one of the corners of the store, “That’s an uh, a bunch of lilys, I believe,” he said as he came up to what Spock was studding.

Spock had been feeling the texture of one of the leaves. “Lr-ry, Uf ish-veh prah tor nash ek'tra?” he said softly to himself.

“It’s a peace Lily,” A voice from the counter said. Kirk and Spock looked up from the plant. The ower of the voice was a Japanese man behind the counter around Kirk’s age. Kirk could have sworn that he had seen him before, but couldn’t put a name to the face. “That arrangement is actually for a customer who should be picking it up later today, but you’re welcome to have a look.”

“Ah, okay, thanks,” Kirk replied, “We’re just looking.”

“Go ahead,” the cashier said.

“C’mon Spock, let’s keep going,” Kirk said as he tugged gently at Spock’s sleeve, “What’s wrong?”

“Nash nam-tor wuh sol-rehkuh salatik, hi uf nam-tor tra' veh svi' t'nash-veh ha-kel?” Spock said, clearly confused about something.

“What language is that?” the cashier asked.

“Uhh…,” Kirk didn’t have a response, “Valk-hans-su?”

“Ah, that makes sense,” the cashier said, not wanting to be any more invasive and ask where that was from.

Spock looked back at Kirk, “_J-im_, no,” he scowled softly.

“We can get some flowers later, okay?” Kirk said back trying to be gentle. He had absolutely no idea what was suddenly wrong.

Spock let go of the Lily leaf t and put that hand under the other solemnly and followed Kirk out of the store.

* * *

There was an electronics store not too far away from where they had parked, largely dealing in televisions and radios. The place also offered a repair service and was often busy with people coming in with them. Kirk walked past, stopped, and then smiled at Spock as he pointed towards the door with his thumb. “Hey, there might be useful stuff in here for ya. Or at least, stuff that you can actually take apart.”

Spock looked at the store before quickly following Kirk in. At this point, it was clear that he was just going to follow the other man around and see what happens.

Working behind the counter was somebody who was a good deal younger than Kirk, but still old enough to tend to the store. He was a brunette (well, somewhere in that stage between being a blond child and a burnet adult) and not somebody that Kirk knew. He worked with a pile of electronics on a counter aside the cashier counter, saw Kirk and Spock come into the store with a nod, and then went back to work. He was working in a singlet. 

Kirk looked around at the hardware for sale. Spock did the same, the two splitting up to explore the small shop on their own terms.

“What’s going here?” Kirk asked the teenager behind the counter with a smile to make some conversation. He felt rather out of his elements in a fancy store like this. 

“I’m cleaning out a television,” The teen said with a thick Russian accent, only half looking up from what he was doing.

Kirk had never actually heard somebody speak with a real Russian accent in person before. It was weird.

“How’s that going?” Kirk said as he leant an elbow on the counter.

The teen looked up at him. “Bad. Et’s going bad.”

“Oh.” 

“There is orange juice all inside of it,” The teen continued as he sorted down a loose wire.

“Somebody’s kid must have spilt it in the set,” Kirk proposed.

“Net. It’s too far into the machine. You would have had to almost get a funnel and pour it right in,” he explained with a sigh, “and they want this working again by tomorrow.”

“Doable?

“Not for what they want to pay for it, no. If you need anything please call out, it vill be a nice break. It’s Pavel.”

“Jim.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Oh, okay,” Kirk said. He didn’t really know what to say to that.

“I have family friends over here,” Chekov began to explain as he kept working, clearly just happy to talk to somebody for the first time that day, “I came over here for the summer for break out of the city but I was given work to do instead. I don’t mind doing et and it’s easy enough, but et’s still annoying.” Something on the television's board sparked, but Chekov didn't flinch. 

Kirk nodded. “Oh, I bet. You an electronics guy?”

“Yeah,” Chekov replied, “what about you? Vat’s your deal?”

“Just a local,” Kirk said with a shrug, “just in the town for some shopping.”

“Ah, a farmboy. Es et for a colour TV?”

“Possibly.”

“They’re very popular of late,” Chekov said as he inspected something inside of a semi-corroded case. 

“Oh yeah,” Kirk said with a nod, “I can believe that.”

Chekov looked back. “That moon landing is not even going to be broadcast in colour, et’s all just hype to sell more television sets, colour or not.”

“So, good business for you guys?”

“Oh, absolutely. Et’s been great,” Chekov replied.

Something on a shelf crashed, Kirk and Chekov looked over to see Spock with a spare part of a tv in his hands and another part on the floor. Kirk gave him a small look of disapproval and Spock tried his best to put everything back. Chekov gave him the same face of mild annoyance.

A chime on the door dinged, and the three looked over to see who it was. It was a woman around the same age as Kirk and Spock with bobbed blond hair and a red floral dress. Her name was Janice Rand. This will be important to remember in this story because that’s what she’ll be referred to as during it.

Kirk just so happened to know her quite well, they had been classmates in both middle and high school. Rand smiled when they saw each other, and Kirk matched it.

“James!” She said as she quickly walked up to him.

“Hey, Jan!” Kirk replied as he turned around to see her better. “You look nice – very nice.”

Rand blushed a pushed some hair out of her face, “Thank you, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you in person, yaknow.”

“Well yeah, just out for the summer,” Kirk said with a blush of his own starting to creep back into his cheeks. He wasn’t wrong.

“That’s nice to see, it’s always good to take a break and come home.” Rand paused for a second, “Hey, are you going to go to the show tomorrow night?”

Kirk was confused. “What? Show?”

Rand found that amusing. “Oh, on the Kyle family lot - these two guys from the town over have managed to book a tent and they’re going to play some rock music out in the field. I heard they’re going to use a truck or two as their stage and a generator for all the lights, it’s going to be fun.”

Kirk smiled. “I would have totally missed that, I had no idea.”

“Oh I hope not,” Rand said with a laugh. “I don’t think it’s going to be any good to be frank with you, but if you’re going it should be fun.”

Kirk crossed his arms. “It just sounds like a big excuse to drink.”

“Oh, it is. Everybody’s bringin' something.”

Kirk nodded. “Yeah, yeah uh, I’ll see what I can do.”

Rand smiled again. “Even if the music isn’t all that good, it’s still something fun to do.”

* * *

Spock had been watching Jim and the other woman talking, more in a study of their interaction than anything of malice, from behind one of the shelves. Their emotional reactions were incredibly strong, and neither at all shyed away from showing it. It was almost like they were courting. Jim giggled at something she said to him. 

_Oh, of course they were. _

Could she have been Kirk’s bondmate, or somebody who may soon become it? It was the most logical conclusion given how they were interacting – and if human social structure was close to Vulcan ones, then it would make sense. ‘Wino-a’ and ‘Geh-orge’ had been clearly bondmates in much the same way.

Jim and the blond human laughed at something else, their shared joy radiated like fire. The woman explained something to him, and Jim nodded excitedly nodded and agreed. It wasn’t a ‘feeling’ (not that he got them, mind you, oh no) of disappointment per say, there wasn’t anything to be disappointed about. Jim had his own life, it would be silly to think anything else.

Still, it was still a bit of a letdown, to use such a layman’s term at a time like this. He still had work to do, and there had to be something worth scavenging in all of these apologue electronics. They were broadcast and receiving machines, and the signals that would have sent and received, although extremely primate, could still be useful in sending out a signal of his own with enough work. Jim must have known that this had been his goal and assumed the equipment here could help.

Spock kept on looking through the shiny machines, scanning each new one with his pocket display to keep as much of a record of them as he could. Let’s hope that Jim was right.

* * *

“-But then that huge corn fire happened last night, did you hear about that?”

Kirk nodded, “Yeah, yeah. I think that there are still people on-site. It's crazy.”

“You mean the UFO crash?” Chekov, who had been listening to the whole conversation, interjected as he leaned over the front counter to speak.

Rand looked over at him, “what?” she asked. 

“Et’s totally a UFO,” Chekov said with a lot more conference that he deserved to be.

“You mean the _satellite_ that crashed?” Kirk asked.

“Yeahhh. Did you see it come down? It was really pretty and left this huge blue and green streak as it did it. My set at home didn’t get any signal the whole time.”

Kirk thought for a moment. “I didn’t see anything crash,” he lied, “but on the way here I saw some tents and cars around it. There had definitely been a fire.”

Chekov clicked his fingers. “Zhat’s what I mean! Why would they tent it like that if they weren’t trying to hide anything?”

Rand shrugged. “To stop people from getting in? If it’s expensive and really is Red property then they probably don’t want people coming in.”

“Aliens! Et _has_ to be!” Chekov said, banging his hands on the counter. “I’d bet they’ve got them over there caged like up a farm animal and now they’re going to run experiments on it.”

Kirk looked over to Spock lift the case of a record placer off, take out an internal speaker and then put the case back. The two made eye contact as Spock put the naked speaker into his sleeve to smuggle it away. Kirk slowly shook his head, and Spock put the speaker back.

“Or maybe it’s in the town?” Kirk said as he looked back to humour what Chekov was saying.

“Even better! They could be anywhere, maybe pretending to be one of us.”

Kirk and Spock made eye contact again.

Rand rolled her eyes, “You boys have been watching too much television. What’s that show called? ‘Space Force?’”

“I’m still right - you’ll see,” Chekov said. “They’ll come and visit and as sooner than you think et, the crash site is going to be cleared, and nobody is going to remember anything after this.”

Nobody stopped Chekov from speaking more, not that either of them had much of a choice in the matter.

“Mysterious alien men in suits going door to door gathering intel and erasing your mind when they’re done, spying on you, living and moving among us as if they were one of us.”

Kirk blinked. “You – you do know what that sounds like with your accent, right?” He asked.

“Oh yeah,” Chekov replied, “that’s half the reason I’m even saying it.”

“Okay, good. Just checking.”

Rand couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Anyways, you three should come, they’re going to go ahead with the show and everything regardless of the ‘aliens.’ It'd be nice.”

Kirk suddenly remembered that everybody else was aware of Spock watching them converse. You could see it in his eyes that was more or less the same on Spock’s end. Spock had no idea now why the humans were all now looking at him, so he just nodded and looked at Kirk for a lifeline.

Rand rather quickly looked back at Kirk. “Yes, anyways,” she said with a returned smile.

Kirk coughed into his hand. “Yes. Well, I won’t stop you from your shopping.”

“Mhm-hm. We’re actually getting a new set soon, so I’m here to pay some of it off.”

“Very nice,” Kirk drifted, not really wanting the conversation to end.

Spock came up to the counter with a decent yet very neat pile of stuff to buy, seemingly chosen at random. He looked over at Kirk and did the same head movement that Kirk had done for him a couple of times today already.

“Do you know that guy?” Rand asked Kirk softly, trying not to b heard.

“He’s uh, he’s a friend of mine. He’s harmless,” Kirk said with a smile before he excused himself and went to attend to Spock.

“Uh-huh,” Rand mused to herself. “Sure thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > Spock had been feeling the texture of one of the leaves. [“‘Lily,’ [but] how did it get to this planet?”] he said softly to himself. 
> 
> > [“This is a Sol-three native, but how is there one in my home?”] Spock said, clearly confused about something.


	10. Downtime

It was a cold morning the day that Gabriel Lorca, a fairly stern and experienced local officer, arrived at the scene. 

Or, 'evening' might be a better word to use, since it was still dark out. 3-am is still the middle of the night no matter how you spin it. The officer was standing before a wreak of, something, and the crop fire that had once engulphed had been taken care of, the firemen who had done it taking a moment or two to regroup. Lorca had made sure that the ‘car’ in the centre hadn’t been towed away before he was able to get there. 

Quite frankly, Lorca just wanted to go home and back to bed. 

“I’m not quite sure what happened, but I heard this big ‘bang,’ right?” The property owner repeated to him. He was clearly quite shaken up from the whole ordeal. 

Lorca was standing in the centre of the scene, a torch in his hand looking it all over. There was quite a lot of light pollution from all the people who were around him, as well as heavy smoke still in the air. The ‘car’ that was the source of it all was sleek like silver and left a clean ring around it and though the path that it had made to get there, almost as if it had vaporized the field as it did it. Lorca ‘hmmm’ed to himself for a moment as he studied the crash. 

“Is there anything else you can offer, Mr Hilton?” Lorca asked the man next to him. 

“Sorry officer,” the farmer replied, “I can’t think of anybody who would do this, or why. Just seems like a bunch of kids bein’ kids.” 

Lorca walked closer to the ship and put on a disposable glove. The ‘car’ looked nothing like a car, it was more like a plane without the wings, or a small space ship like what you see in fiction. It was sleek, burnt apron impact, and whoever had been piloting it left in quite a hurry. Half of the console had been blown out, sparks still flying. It was a bizarre sight on its own. 

Lorca hadn’t been around all that much in his life, but it wasn’t hard to tell that this thing was rather unusual. 

There was some sort of substance on the seat and on the side of the ship. Lorca touched it with his gloved hand, it felt like cold blood. Lorca shone his torch on the ‘cockpit’ and then on his hand. Green? That was strange. He cleaned up his hand and then turned back to the farmer. “Is there anybody else on the property?”

He shook his head. “Just me at the moment, my-“

Lorca cut in, not really caring all that much about the details, “Good, good. I’m going to need you to stay out of the site if you can, this is an active crime scene.”

The farmer nodded, still trying to get a good look at the ship for himself. “Ah- yes yes. That’s understandable.” 

Lorca nodded. “I’m going to have to call some more people in, just to cover basses,” he reported with a reassuring smile, trying to get him to go away. 

The farmer smiled the same, before putting his hands in his pockets and went to leave. “Well, good luck officer. Make sure you take care of this.” 

Lorca took out his radio and said something into it while looking at the ship. The wind began to pick up a little more, but he didn’t flinch. If he was right, this was going to be massive. 

* * *

  
After their time in the town Kirk and Spock headed back to Kirk’s place, making sure to avoid the crash site this time around. The tents and everything was all still there – it almost felt like there was somehow even more of it all. But like, that would be overkill, right? It already felt like it was overkill to begin with. 

Spock had set back to work as soon as they arrived. If he couldn’t go back to this ship he might as well try and make a radio. At least, that’s what Kirk assumed he was doing. A sort of alien version of a smoke signal, perhaps? It didn’t seem at all like that stupid of an idea.

The best way you could describe what Kirk was doing in the meantime was ‘downtime.’ He wanted to be able to help out Spock, but there wasn’t all that much that he was realistically able to do. Kirk wasn’t a computer guy by any means, so the best he could really offer was a place to sleep. 

Still, that was enough to help Spock out.

“Spock!” Kirk called out from the kitchen after a couple of hours. “Come and eat something.” 

Spock looked up from the mess of electronics that he had created for himself and down the doorway between the kitchen and living room. He stood up and met at the entrance, looking at the mess that Kirk had created. 

The kitchen windows were wide open, and there was heat (and a tiny bit of smoke) coming off a used frying pan left by the stove. Food had been both put on an open shelf and pulled apart on the counter. It was quite a nice country kitchen aside from bits of grime in places, lots of checks and light blue everywhere. It showed it’s age in looks, but not in wear. 

By the time Spock had arrived in the kitchen Kirk had already put out two plates on the table. Both had a messy burger on each and some homemade fries that he had just finished making to the side. “Burgers!” Kirk reported showing the lunch off, “It’s a type of Earth food,” he explained as he sat down before one of the plates. He gestured Spock to do the same, “It might not be what you’re used to eating, but hopefully it’s alright. Sorry that there wasn’t anything here this morning.” 

Spock sat down on the opposing chair and looked at his plate. 

Kirk took a large bite of his burger, bbq sauce dripping all over his shirt. “You eat it like this, see? With your hands,” he explained with a mouth half-full. 

Spock didn’t touch his food. He instead just put his hands out palms-up. 

“Yeah, with your hands. Oh - yeah right mm-kay.” Kirk swallowed and went to go and wash his hands in the sink. Spock followed and scrubbed his hands up to the elbows with the soap. Kirk just felt like he was being lectured the whole time that he did it, but it couldn’t hurt to be clean. 

Kirk wiped his hands on his shirt and went back to eating. He took to a mouthful of the fries before taking more of his burger. Spock went back to his own chair and began to poke at his food, taking the burger apart as he did it. After a few moments of him working out what everything in it was he took the patty out, put the burger back together, and took a careful bite. 

“Don’t like meat, huh?” Kirk asked, a chip stuck to the side of his mouth, “Alright then, I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” 

Spock seemed indifferent about the food, and clearly wasn’t used to any part of it. He almost looked like he was eating it all to just to be polite. 

“Try the chips,” Kirk said, holding a few up. “They might be better.” 

Spock tried one. “No,” he said softly as he put them back on the plate.

Kirk chuckled at that and reached over. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’ll eat ‘em.” 

Spock looked over at the raw ingredients that were on the counter before he got up and located the dressing that Kirk had put on the burgers. He checked over the bottle and then turned back to Kirk with it in his hand. “Spock - no.” He said as he shook his head. 

“Oh c’mon, that’s the best part!” Kirk said, a tiny bit more aggressively than he intended to say it. “But I mean, you’re welcome to make something to eat without it if you want.”

There was a knock at the front door. Kirk leaned back on his chair and looked all the way to it down the hallway to it. Kirk waited, and then another knock. “Police,” the door-knocker called out. 

“Ah fuck,” Kirk said as he got up to answer the door. 

“Yeyo,” Kirk said as he opened the front door just enough to see who it was. 

The door-knocker in question was Caucasian, male, and ageing wonderfully. He was in a very formal-looking uniform - a cowboy-style hat included. Kirk knew this man a lot better than he wished to. The cop looked up from a clipboard. “Mister Kirk, I saw that the power and water had been restored to his property, but I didn’t expect it to be you.”

“Well, Mr-“

-Officer-“

“-Officer Pike,” Kirk said with an eye roll, “I do live here. I’m allowed to turn on the power every once and a while.”

“Indeed you do,” Pike replied looking back at Kirk. 

“Was… was that it?” Kirk asked. 

“Nope.”

“Oh,” Kirk said as he opened the door some more. Pike didn’t come in, but he did take a glance inside the living room. Spock was watching from the kitchen. Another cop? Why? 

“What’s going on in here?” Pike asked. 

Kirk shrugged, “we’re building a machine that we’re going to use to contact aliens that are in low orbit right now out of old electronics and a lot of guessing work,” he bullshitted. “We’re actually just started having lunch right now, I even made burgers so that’s what you should be smellin’.” 

“Uh-huh,” Pike replied, completely used to Kirk’s regular antics at this point. 

Christopher Pike had been a local cop for longer than Kirk had been alive, and hadn’t enjoyed the parts that Kirk had been there, mostly because he was the one who had to deal with him. Pike owned a property closer to the town than Kirk’s and had two horses that he cared about as much as he did his job, and he cared quite a lot about his job. 

“Can I ask about your whereabouts last night?” Pike started. 

“Uhm, just at home, had a lotta cleaning to do,” Kirk replied, “What’s wrong? I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?” 

“I have a report of some vandals last night setting fire to a vehicle in a property not too far from here, causing half of it to be destroyed from the blaze. At least two people, possibly teenagers, where seen fleeing the scene in a convertible just like,” He pointed to Kirk’s car with his thumb, “that one.”

“Oh. Wild,” Kirk said as he looked over at his car. The roof was up, and on the side was covered in small blood-like stains one of the doors from the adventure last night. They should get that cleaned up sometime soon. There was also a small number of loose plants sticking out of the grill and on the windshield – most of it still nice and green. Pike’s cop car was also in the driveway. “I can see why you’ve come here.” 

Officer Pike sighed. “I am doing rounds, yes, I’m just here looking for information or an admission. The best evidence that I’ve got is an eye-whiteness account who didn’t catch much and some tire-tracks that could belong to a whole host of vehicles.”

Kirk paused. “What about that ‘car’ that got blown up?’ Who owns that one?”

Pike shook his head. “I believe they’re running checks on it at the moment, but as far as I know it’s most likely been taken from the junkyard across town.” 

“Have you… checked the junkyard?” Kirk asked. 

“Son, I can’t do everything,” Pike cut in. “Do you have any information that can help me here? I don’t need sass, just cooperation.” 

“I didn’t see or hear anything, sorry,” Kirk said as he began to close the front door.

Pike caught it with his foot and kept it open. “Nothing at all?” he asked. 

“No, I would have been asleep. The most I know about this is that I drove past the site this morning and another cop told me- hang on,” Kirk paused and thought back, “is this about that satellite crash? That also happened last night a few blocks down.”

Pike blinked back. “What? What are you talking about?” 

“Yeah – yeah,” Kirk snapped his fingers, “That’s what I got told, at least, when I drove past this morning. There are a lot of tents around there. It’s like a government thing or something?”

“I have absolutely no idea what you are on about,” Pike said, looking over his paperwork on a clipboard, “I know what the report was, and it didn’t involve anything of the sort.”

“Yeah but- you can just go over there and look. Lorca’s probably there now, knowing him.” 

Pike looked back. “This was the information that I was given this morning before I started my rounds, I doubt it’s been that misconstrued.”

“Right, yes, that sounds right,” Kirk said. He coughed into his sleeve. “Anyways, if anybody tells me anything I’ll make sure to channel my inner narc and report straight over to ya. I wish I could help.”

“Kid.”

“What! Sir! For once I don’t have anything for you,” Kirk said as he pushed open the door to accentuate his body language. “And besides, I’m no arsonist, you know that, I know that, and I like cars. I’m not gonna just be blowing one up like that for fun.” 

“Yes, you are correct there,” Pike reported as he noted something down on his clipboard. “Well Mr Kirk, I suppose that I’ll see you later.” 

“Goodbye,” Kirk said with a smile before he clicked the door closed and exhaled. 

“That has to be one of the worse cover-ups that I’ve even heard,” Kirk exclaimed as he turned around. “I mean – what?”

Spock was back in the living room by now. “Au nam-tor fi-tor etek,” he said straightly. 

“Neh,” Kirk said with a shrug. “That guy’s just a cop, he’s harmless.” Kirk looked into the door’s peep-hole, Pike had left. “Still, I don’t like where this is heading.” 

* * *

  
G: “Now, what do we actually know about the KY-6 satellite crash? Well for one, we couldn’t find any evidence that it was known to fall out of orbit when it did, or any reports in newspapers telling people to look out for it.”

R: “And we looked, too, it took us ages.”

G: “And even after, there was nothing about it. It was like the crash happened and then everybody forgot about it. We did, however, actually find the police inquiry looking for the two ‘teenagers’ who had been seen fleeing the crash – despite it being dropped within the first few hours. Apparently the one was driving was blond and in a big jacket.” 

R: “So like, did they think some kids saw the crash and then made a run for it? Did they take KY-6? These two stories don’t really vibe well together.” 

G: “That’s the thing! The story changed! All that screams to me is ‘hey. Aliens left their crashed ship and are hiding out in the town.’ But no we can’t say that – but that’s what we’re implying.”

You could pretty much hear the smile growing on the co-host’s face.

R: “….Or?”

G: “Or! Somebody crashed their ship, and somebody else - who just happened to be there - helped them out ET-style.” 

R: “There’s our link to the James Kirk case!”

G: “Told ya we would get to it.” [Laugher] “You have to remember now, the moon was kind of like a massive deal back at this point in time. America was a week away from landing on the thing and the public was gearing up for it. I don’t buy that a satellite crash like this would have just slipped away and out of the public imagination.” 

R: “Unless it was just overshadowed, that was. They all could have just not cared enough.”

G: “Or that.” 

R: “Or: it was all erased from public consciousness, the real story only being left as a messy paper trail out of things that got missed.”

G: “That’s the spirit!”

R: "So, ya proposin' that James found this crash?"

G: "Oh, ab-so-fucking-lutly." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > Spock was back in the living room by now. “[They are onto us,]” he said straightly.


	11. More Downtime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, here’ something that’s going to be very dated in a week or two from the date of me posting this chapter: hashtag everything has been canceled to stop a pandemic from taking hold of my country so I’m working on fanfiction instead gang
> 
> Also: some things that I wanted to note at some point so I might as well note them here: 
> 
> \- The podcast things aren’t the full transcript all cut up, they’re just segments taken out of context to fit whatever context that it's there to fill. I don’t know if that needs to be pointed out, but I wanted to make that clear. I am not nearly skilled enough to write scripts like that on the full. There is a narrative purpose to these two but I would not blame you if you just skip over them while reading – not all that much changes about the rest of the content without them until the very end, to be honest.  
\- Spock is probably disco-spock here, Kirk is whatever you want him to be. I suppose that an AOS Kirk would work the best, but have you /seen/ a young William Shatner  
\- Spock has a little computer/PADD/pda/phone-thing due to the fact that I was born in the 21st century and apparently struggle to write somebody without something like that on them at all time

[…]  
  


R: “Okay, to recap. There isn’t much of one, but here’s the known timeline of James’s last week being uh, known.”

G: “James had left [indeterminable on the account of him trying to cover up the fact that he did not, in fact, know the date on the top of his head] on [another mutter exactly the same] after assaulting another student.”

R: “He punched a classmate in the face.”

G: “He did, indeedy. Anyways as I’ve already said, he was next seen a decent while later, being seen around town doing whatever people do around towns. The story goes he was seen with another person – apparently a tall, pale man about the same age as him.

The two of them were seen in a local florist, then an electronics store across the street. The last stop was in a supermarket. The night of the next day they were seen together at a local-made show in a local’s property, a yearly event in the town that actually lasted way up to the late 70’s, and then came back again in the late 90’s. I guess they didn’t like corn raves as much in the 80’s as one might assume.”

R: “The morning after the show, James put in his car in at a small mechanics by the edge of the town. This is the last piece of paper proof that we have on James. The car was later sent to the town’s impound lot when nobody ever came back to claim it.”

G: “During all of this, and for over a week after James’s interaction with, [a short pause to double-check a note, because out of every bit of information he had, that somehow made it into the footnotes] ‘Scotty’s Mechanics’ the site of the crash was active, the whole area being heavily restricted from both locals and the press. The most that we have left of the site is old, far-off photos were taken at the time showing – and let’s be real here – way more tents than you think one would need for this sort of thing.”

R: “What we want to work out is how exactly these two cases work together, because there is no way in any hell that they don’t.”

G: “it’s the fucking plot of a movie, that’s what it is.”

R: “Like a kid’s movie?”

G: “I mean, if you dumbed it down a little and add some of some friends for James to help him out. It would make a good animated one I suppose.”

R: “Nerdy one who can help with the alien tech, cool one, Jimmy – our protag, the alien, and ‘girl.’”

G: [a short chuckle/snort sort of laughter]

R: [fighting laughter of his own] “Anyways, yes, yes. Back on topic – after the missing person’s report was filled the extended area was checked out, as well various backpacking locations and visa applications in case he fled the country. If James had stayed in Iowa after leaving home he would have probably been found by now, I doubt that a runaway would be able to hide in the country for so long and nobody recognizes him in the process. Other standard procedures where put in place, such as looking into ‘religious establishments’ that might have appealed to him and whatnot. His case was eventually closed around a year later due to a lack of evidence and since Kirk was an adult at the time, the idea of him leaving to start a new life after a kinda shitty childhood didn’t seem too implausible.

But like, no other sightings? No job applications or big purchase under the same name? No record of him leaving the country? That takes a lot of effort to maintain if you’re not dead instead.”

G: “But we can assure you, if we do actually find any more concrete evidence of alien occupation and abduction instead, we’ll be sure to make a follow-up episode.”

[…]

* * *

It became quite cloudy over the afternoon. It didn’t end up raining until around 6pm, so until then it was rather pleasant.

One of the first things that Kirk did after Officer Pike left, aside from finishing his food (and a second burger, he’s a growing boy, yaknow,) was clean off his car. (It’s still covered in blood, yaknow.) Aside from some plants and dirt in places, the machine was actually in a pretty decent ‘this was brought new and sold on only a couple years later’ condition, but that didn’t stop him from getting rid of any evidence it might be carrying.

The specks of dried blood that were on the back seat would have to be properly cleaned, so that sucked. Even If Kirk did happen to have the right stuff lying around for the job, he didn’t trust himself _not_ to bleach the whole area accidentally in the process. The outside of the convertible was a different, far easier story. That could just be dealt with some water and soap, so that was what he was doing.

Naturally, it didn’t take very long before Spock came out of the house to see what in the world was happing outside.

Kirk waved at him with a smile, a running house in the non-waving hand. “Mash-sure-layek?” he said as he walked in closer, the end of the hose pinched.

“No,” Spock replied quickly, Kirk had very clearly gotten whatever word he was trying to say wrong.

Kirk shrugged. “Hey, at least I’m trying’ here.”

“Du nam-tor using nuh' mau slor-masutik,” Spock said, his arms crossed before him.

“I’m cleaning off my car,” Kirk said, completely missing the fact that what Spock had said wasn’t a question. “The hose is connected to the tank over there,” he pointed to the other hose attached to it.

Spock went over and turned on the second hose. Now he was armed. 

Kirk went back to hosing off the last of the soap from the front rims.

With a thumb over the end of the second hose Spock shot some water out to clean the same area more effetely, but instead shot kirk in the back of the head. 

Spock instantly knew that he had done wrong.

Kirk just laughed at that, shaking out the water from of his hair. Spock looked down at the hose. It was very simple, regular old garden house made by aliens. Why was it so amusing to him? It was just water.

Spock spurted more water on Kirk to see what his reaction would be. An experiment, if you will. Kirk dogged just narrowly out of the way, getting just his shirt wet instead of his face. Kirk spurted his own hose back at Spock, Soaking Spock completely. Spock blinked, looking down at his wet clothing.

“Got ya!” Kirk laughed out.

Spock put his thumb on the end of his hose and shot high pressure water right into Kirk’s mouth. He had been aiming for his chest, but that worked too. Kirk was pushed to the ground with a gag as he spat out the water out with a cough.

“Go’th ya,” Spock replied once he saw that Kirk was totally fine.

Kirk just laughed again, his own hose spilling out all over making what was left of the dirt driveway all into mud. He sat up, “Is that a little smile that I see, Mr Spock?” he said with a smile of his own.

Spock’s face instantly returned to its normal stoic self.

“I better finish this job, I think all the mud’s made it worse,” Kirk said as he got up. His clothing was now covered in mud, and what wasn’t covered in mud was sticking to his skin. Kirk undid his pinch on the hose and washed himself down, shaking off the water like a young Ka-mak.

“Du nam-tor wuh flekh hasu,” Spock said softly as he watched.

Kirk pushed blond hair out of his face, smiled a warm, closed-mouth smile, and then did the same thumb-over-house-end tactic at Spock for a final bit of revenge, ruining Spock’s perfect hair.

Spock did not appreciate this, but knew when he was defeated.

* * *

Spock had a warm shower to wash away the tank water, something he couldn’t remember having since he was young. To say that Spock was almost regretting that decision to only take sonic showers would be an understatement, if Spock was able to admit for once in his life that he really liked things like warm showers.

Maybe that’s why half the humans that he had met were so happy all the time: they had warm showers. Maybe if that officer who didn’t let them near the ship crash site earlier had one every once and a while he would relax a little.

Spock looked down at his hands.

Blood.

Huh. That wasn’t there before.

His body wasn’t used to being on this planet, and the alien food that he had been eating while he had been here surly wasn’t helping. There was so much fat and sugar that he could taste, and surly a lot more that he couldn’t. And meat, these people ate quite a lot of that. Spock was getting sick, and he really had no idea how bad it was going to get.

Still, he would survive, and he should not be on this planet for much longer, and once he was off he would be decontaminated and healed right up.

Spock turned the tap on (it was a simple twist valve, much like every other one in the house) and washed his hands, blood from his hands and in the sink washing away. No more evidence, no more problem. He rested his hands on the sink, looked at the shiny white material that it was made o-

Spock had suddenly lost his lunch right into it in a single, rather unpleased motion. His body had completely rejected what he had eaten, typical. The sink was half-filled in semi-digested food, and it wasn’t nearly as fun to clean up as one might have assumed it to be.

* * *

The night came quickly, and Kirk was just as quick to go to sleep, needing a lot more of it than Spock did. After washing down his car he did some yardwork, cleaning out an old, half-abandoned garden bed to kill time. After sleep and making breakfast the morning after, he went back to work outside.

The garden beds outside of the house were going to take a lot of hard work and dedication to get back into shape, and the couple of trees behind it that grew in between a decades-abandoned collection of farming equipment where even worse. Kirk had been working on this side of the house – since it also being in the shade at the time and the gardens were not – when Spock came out to check up on him. Kirk had a small axe in his hand, and was half finished pulling an old tractor plow from a mess of dead grass and dirt.

“Ji-m,” a voice said from behind when he took a moment to catch his breath.

Kirk turned around, his expression changing for the better when he saw who it was. “Spock! Hey there.”

Spock held out a glass of water to him.

“What’s this for?” Kirk said, wiping down the sweat form his brow and fixing up his hat.

“Mon-masu,” Spock informed.

“Mohn-Ma’su,” Kirk mused as he took the water and took a bigger drink of it than he was planning too. “Water.”

Spock bowed a small bow, his task now done.

“Thank you, Spock,” Kirk said with a smile. The water and glass had been chilled, and since Kirk hadn’t yet put a jug of water in the fridge, Spock must have done it for him.

Spock looked over to see what Kirk was doing, nature had seemed to have taken over this corner of the estate.

“That’s uh, that’s a plow. It’s for diggin’ up the dirt,” he said before taking another drink, finishing the glass. “Too bad it’s mostly stuck in it, I don’t even think it’s been used since before I was born.”

Spock grabbed one of the ends of the plow and looked back at Kirk, Kirk put down the glass onto a rock and picked the other. “One, two,” he counted, “and three,” on ‘three’ Kirk put his weight in to lift it out of it’s burial, Spock did the same, starting half a second later once he figured out the que.

Spock didn’t find the job as hard as Kirk did, in fact, the plow was left lop-sided when both stopped lifting. Spock was either stronger than Kirk or wasn’t as tired, either worked. The main thing was that it was out, and with a bit of cleaning and sharpening and it would be as good as new.

Kirk sighed, his hands on his hips. “Yeah, alright then. You can have that.”

* * *

The afternoon carried onwards, the warm light of the sunset rolled over the fields in a golden wash. The dust-covered landscape was frozen in time for the brief hour that it was at its peak.

Spock wasn’t there to watch the sunset, he was still inside working primarily with his little pocket computer disk and whatever else was there for him to work with. If he could somehow boost whatever signal that the thing used to talk to other alien machines, somebody up there would know that he was down there.

Finally, Spock was ready to test his work. Kirk had been lying on the couch, observing as Spock explained what he was doing to him. Not that he had any idea what Spock was saying in the few comments that Spock did give, but he was still fascinated about it all. Spock was pretty much doing the Vulcan equivalent of explaining what you were doing to a nearby cat. 

Spock held his little computer in one hand and fiddled with Kirk’s semi-former television set. The screen of the set flickered into life, mirrored what was on Spock’s, fuzzed loudly enough to make both teens wince, and then tuned into a location transmission with a pop.

“Hey congrats,” Kirk said once the picture cleaned as he took his hands away from his ears, “You’ve managed to make a TV out of a TV.”

Spock didn’t find the same humor in this as Kirk did. He just watched the screen in annoyance. It was a broadcast of some old television show with actors in a cheap set.

“That’s uhh, Space Force I think,” Kirk said, watching the action on the screen and rubbing his neck. “That’s Captain Hampton, and that guy in the green uniform is his alien first officer Commander, uh, Gorka, or something.”

Spock studied the footage. ‘Gorka’ was clearly just a human man in makeup, a few ridges and bumps had been added onto the actor’s forehead, as well as a white wig. If it didn’t look so horrible, he could have maybe been convinced that this was some species that he simply didn’t know of.

Glittery sparkles came around the human actors as they transported down to a bland-looking dessert. It was very clearly an even cheaper set covered in sand, with a purple backdrop acting as a fake sky. Hampton took out a prop gun from his uniform belt and began to run around the set with it. Spock went to turn off the TV and keep trying, but he found himself strangely drawn to watching it.

You have to remember that Vulcan’s don’t really have television, the best that you’ll find from then is recordings of lectures or historical events, so the idea of just mindless entertainment recorded and broadcast like this was… interesting.

Kirk watched for a bit, taking a sip of his beer. He looked at Spock. Man, that was like, a real alien there. Not like something on TV, but he was real and in his living room. It was almost surreal thinking of it that way. He didn’t come in a shiny space suit with a ray gun, he came with a big, baggy shirt and a fancy pocket computer.

Spock didn’t really like the program. There was something about it that just seemed, off, to him. Did humans know about the other aliens that were around and observing them? Or was it just a big guess? Captivated enough about the prospect of space travel that they began to speculate on what they might encounter – and instead of writing theory on the topic they wrote a script. This was a very strange species.

Spock turned off the television when Captain Hampton shot an ‘alien’ that was another human with pointed ears over his regular ones with a sigh. That was enough of this venture.

Kirk cocked his head to the side towards the door. “Hey, Spock, do you want to go see that show that Jan was talking about yesterday? It might be a nice break from all of this work.”

Spock, because he had no idea what Kirk had said, and didn’t really give much of a response.

“Come with me Spock, and bring your coat,” Kirk assured as he got his bomber jacket from a coat rack by the door, zipping it all the way up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Disco-era spock voice, completely deadpan*: maybe if Lorca had a nice bath every once and a while he might be less of a dick.”
> 
> -
> 
> > “[You are using far too much water,]” Spock said, his arms crossed before him.
> 
> > “[Youa are a strange being],” Spock said softly as he watched. 
> 
> > “[[drinking] water,]” Spock informed.


	12. Our Own Little Woodstock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter in terms of what happens, but it’s a chapter published regardless. 
> 
> And can I just say, holy shit? This has really taken off since the last update – so that you for that not-so-lil boom in views.

The two of them drove out in Kirk’s car. The last trickle of the sunset was still visible as it cast long shadows across the tarmac road. Spock had an old black beanie of Sam’s on that didn’t seem to want to let him see and spent the whole ride looking out the window, looking like he had been thinking about something. The radio was on, and Kirk occasionally tapped the steering wheel to the beat along with it. He wondered what Valk-hans-su music might have been like, assuming they even had it to begin with.

If he couldn’t ask that, he wished that at least he could help Spock feel better about his project failing so aggressively right before him. At least maybe tonight might be a nice distraction from it all.

The car was parked somewhere on the outskirts of the whole event, but still close enough that they could, and did, easily walk up to it.

And what an event it was. Rand had been right in talking about what it was, a dismountable stage put up with a clearing full of light and people (and other cars, mostly utes, and smaller trucks) that people where sitting all over. Music had started already but was hard to hear, but you could hear that everybody was just hanging out and having fun. It was done by locals, and was a bit like their own mini 200-ish-person Woodstock with a lineup of whoever had a guitar or garage band lying around. it was the summer! Time to party.

On the horizon, but not far enough for it _not_ to be seen by everybody, was the tented over crash site of Spock’s former ship. It too was covered in it’s own lights, cars, and people doing their own things, but it wasn’t at all as inviting as the show. The tents there glowed a soft white of portable spotlights, and a lot of work had been done to make sure you didn’t go anywhere near. All it did was remind Kirk that Spock was still wanted man, all that the people there had to do was figure out what they were looking for and it would be all over for both of them.

Had any of the people behind the former site gone over to the party to tell them that they couldn’t do it? Not yet, at least. They had been scheduled to be their fist, and everybody was still too sober to cause any problems. I’ll get back to you on that in a couple of hours on this, but for now, there wasn’t at all any hostel borders between either.

Kirk and Spock made their way to an entrance of sort, made up of a foldable plastic table under a marquee and a bunch of people hanging out before it. There was a young man around Kirk age, much tanner than he was, who seemed to oversee everybody’s admission. He was chatting to another guy when Kirk rocked up wanting to get in. “Hey,” He said with a bright smile, his feet up on the table in runners and a can of off-brand soft drink in his hand.

Kirk smiled back. “Evenin’,” he said as he tipped an invisible hat out of habit.

The desk clerk[-ish, he wasn’t one, but there wasn’t really a better word to use to describe what he as doing] sat up in his chair and dug out two string bracelets from a box that they had been using to count how many people had paid on entry. He looked Kirk up and down, “Busy day?” he asked, starting a conversation.

“A bit,” Kirk shrugged in response.

“Anyways, everything’ started already but hey, no pressure. We got all night.”

“Eh, I had stuff to do,” Kirk thought for a second, “and a bit of tv to watch.”

“Oh- oh - no Space Force spoilers, we had to leave super early to set this all up,” the clerk said quickly as he stood up in his chair.

“....It was a rerun,” Kirk said as he crossed his arms, already feeling like getting in there was going to be a chore and a half.

“What?” the second guy behind him that the clerk had been talking to said, “it shouldn’t have been.”

“Well,” Kirk replied, trying to move the conversation away from space and those from it, “I don’t really care, honestly.”

“Hey- hey- you excited about the alien?” the clerk asked, leaning forward on the table and speaking as if he was able to fall into a radio sales pitch.

Kirk blinked. “What?”

He pointed to the very obvious government alien ship containment zone around 2 o’clock from where he was facing Kirk. “That.”

“It’s not aliens,” Kirk laughed, a slightly terrified, ‘oh shit’ laugh. “It was just a satellite.”

The clerk scoffed. “It totally isn’t! We even looked for any data that we could find on that – it wasn’t meant to crash down like this, I’m fairly sure that it didn’t even exist on any records until now.”

“And we looked, too, took us _ages_,” the other man behind the desk had said as he put a box of something on another box, keeping himself in the conversation. He was somehow blonder than Kirk and was halfway into growing a blond goatee. “It’s like it was made up just as a cover story.” Both were around the same age as Kirk, they could have even been from the same school as Kirk had gone too, if Kirk cared enough to remember.

Both teens also spoke in strikingly familiar voices that you or I might just recognize, but that little detail didn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.

Kirk sighed a dug out his wallet. The only things in it aside from a bit of cash was his license and a paper recite from the electronics store in town. “Can we please just get in? how much are you charging?”

“Ten dollars a head,” the clerk said without a missing a beat.

Kirk closed his wallet with a snap and looked at him in disbelief. “Oh - _fuck off_.”

“Hey, man, we can’t host this for free. Check out all the lights alone we have to run.”

“Nobody in their right mind is going to pay _that_.”

“Nobody is.”

This was when Chekov turned up, the conversation directed over to him instead. Chekov, despite the fact that it was dark out, had aviator sunglasses and a fairly compact jacket on. He looked like a knockoff Kirk in his attempt to look cool.

“There he is, the red of the hour,” the clerk said with an elbow on the table, leaning towards him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Chekov replied. He dug into his jacket and somehow took out two tall bottles from inside, putting them on the table with heavy thunks. One was vodka and the other was bourbon. “Here you go.”

The clerk cheered softly and threw one of the bracelets to him. “Now zat’s what I’m talkin’ about!” he exclaimed, putting on his own take of Chekov’s accent.

Chekov quickly tied it to his wrist. “Hey, any new activity from the crash?” he asked.

The first ‘yEAH’’ed again with a smile and then looked at the mildly concerned Kirk. “See?” He went back to his regular composure, “haven’t seen anything drive past since we got here, sadly, although I’m pretty sure I saw somebody go on a coffee run.”

“Shame,” Chekov said with a shrug. “Still, et’s about time something happened out here.”

“Oooh, it’s so cool, ain’t it?” the clerk said, “I betcha they’ve gotten one locked up right now.”

“They really don’t, but okay,” Kirk said with a sigh, looking around to try and see as to where Spock was.

“Blondie over here doesn’t believe that it’s a UFO,” the clerk said as he pointed in the general direction of ‘blondie.’

Kirk rolled his eyes and mimed what had been said to him in response. “I just want to get in,” he said.

Chekov turned to look at who ‘blondie’ was. He recognized Kirk, but didn’t do anything with that information. “Your loss.” He then jumped the rope and went in.

“I leave for two months and I’m surrounded by lunatics,” Kirk mused to himself, actually rather amazed at it all. This whole town had gotten alien fever in a matter of days.

Spock found Kirk again and handed him a paper cup that matched on that he had himself.

“Mohn-Ma’su?” Kirk asked, looking into the cup. It seemed to be just cold water.

Spock took a sip of his cup. His kimono top was tied around his waist and beanie was higher now, but still covered his ears.

Kirk did the same, and then immediately spat it out. “This straight vodka!” he coughed out. Spock didn’t seem bothered by it and pointed his attention to something else. 

“Hey! Jim!” a new voice called out as Kirk tried to put himself back together, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

Kirk turned out to see who it was, _Ah! It was Janice._ “Hey!” he called back, jogging a few paces over to meet her. She was in a red dress, shorter than the once that he had last seen her in, her hair had a headband in it, and was looking ready to party.

“I was hoping that you would come,” she said.

“Well, nothin’ much else to do around here, and I said that I would.”

The two of them walked back to the front desk together.

“These two are with me,” Rand said as she put a case of beer cans that she had been carrying on the table as payment in. The first desk guy gave a finger gun in approval and took a can from it at the same time as Rand and Kirk did. This leaving Kirk with both a can of beer in one hand and an entire cup of straight vodka in the other.

“Spock! We’re goin’ in!” Kirk waved him over with the beer-hand, the three of them entering without any other problems and a smile from the second desk guy as he took the carton and passed the rest of the cans around the party.

* * *

[…]

[R.Cawson.22]  
>I think that it’s too similar to the Amanda Grayson case.

[Xx_DJ_GDawg_xX]  
>?

>The James Kirk One. Iowa, 1969, no body.

>no I got that bit  
_>?_

>Yaknow like, the teacher lady. 1940-something. We did the episode in March, I think.

>weve done other rural disappearances than her before – whats wrong with it?

>I’ve done more digging on Jim. It’s uh.  
>screenshot_AGrayson46-34v2.png  
>screenshot_JKirk69-4.png  
>both cases have a connection to some stranger who like, if both cases weren’t set 20 years and half a country apart I would say it could even be the same person. Both missing person’s case had them seen with somebody that ended up as a suspect. It’s weird. I feel like if we mention Kirk’s one we’re going to be saying the same thing as before but with zero evidence or meat to it.

>Youre good at padding, tho  
>:0  
>_vampires _  
>its the same dude hes just a vampire

>okay while that’s’ great idea and I love both the mindset and energy that’s not what I’m talking about.>like.  
>ot  
>her than the satlight crash the actual talk of the disappearance is going to end up the same. If we had media recordings to pad it up and give more talk on his family and life it might work, but since it happened like 60 years ago I don’t really know how much new we can bring. Kirk would be good as just a part of a bigger episode.

>then why not just talk about the crash n stuff  
>Fucking  
>there was a fuckinn crop circle at the back of his house, dude  
>it’s an alien thing  
>I wanna talk aliens more we never get to talk aliens

>We’re not allowed.

>I know!!!!  
>:(  
I wanna talk james t kirk at some point. Fucking tented ufo crash and a complete disappearance of a dude out of thing air the same week as the moon landing  
>How is this not a movie  
>I want this as a movie how much do you think we could change abt it to get a script in

>Like, almost all of this is pure speculation and half of the research that you’ve given me is rubbish.

>I bet the aliens where there to watch the moonlanding  
>fskjgjkhsfrkljr v2.docx  
>I’ve already started a script we gotta do this one after the Dr. Gillian Taylor episode

>For a James Kirk movie?

  
>nah podep  
>jgfrfdf.docx  
>heres another link tree doc  
>anyways it might be fun to connect the two

>Call it something like ‘The Disappearance of James T Kirk.’ Actually no, that’s a good episode title.  
>Yeah it would be.  
>Look it’s like, 3am. I’ll dig up the old Amanda Grayson research in the morning and see what I can find to put into the script.  
>Go to bed.

>I am in bed

>Gene I can fucking see your LED room lights flashing from here. at least turn them off.

>it’s party time  
>in-bed party time  
>I’m in the zone here lemme work  
>did you know that the moon landing and woodstock happedn in the same summer no wonder boomers are like that

>please be in the ‘party zone’ with headphones on at least. You’ve listened to the same 3 songs for the last 5 hours and I’m going actually going to go mad.

>yaknwo you love me

[…]

* * *

Past the thin rope and 'guard,' the event on the inside was more or less exactly the same, but now with more fabric bracelets and beer cans lying all over the ground. There was a rather contagiousness energy to the whole atmosphere that made it worth leaving the house for.

“Is there more people here than there was last year?” Kirk asked, looking around. there was, indeed, a lot more people there than last year, almost all of the new faces Kirk could not recognize and almost all of the new ones older than you would think them to be.

“So, who’s the handsome friend with the sling? You never introduced me,” Rand asked her own question with a little bit of a sing-song tone, digging into Kirk’s side a little.

Kirk’s attention went back to the whole other human beside him. “Spock?”

“Oh? He has a name?” She teased. She looked at ‘Spock’ to the other side and slightly behind Kirk. Spock looked back at her, but didn’t wave, keeping his hands in his trouser pockets. 

Rand knew the kinds of people that Jim hung around, this, weirdo, to put it bluntly, didn’t seem the slightest bit like one of them.

Kirk didn’t have a good response to that. He didn't actually have any explanations as to who this guy even was lined up. Oops. “He’s uh, a friend from out of state,” he replied. “A friend of the family.”

Spock drifted from the human two as their pace slowed down with their conversation. He checked out a leg on a marque, kicking the bag of sand that was keeping it in place before standing beside it, out of the way of anybody who might have needed to get in or out.

“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” Rand asked, looking back up at Kirk. Kirk needed to shave.

“Just in general, I think," Kirk replied with a soft voice, "a lot’s been going on of late, that's all.”

“Well then,” she clicked open her can, fizz getting on her hand, “at least now you can take your mind off it all for a little bit.”

Kirk was still looking over at Spock. _Maybe they should go home? Something horrible was bound to happen here, or something bad was going happen. _He felt like a parent. _Oh god, is this what it’s like to be a mom?_

Spock, on the other hand, was standing to the side, sipping on his vodka and studying everybody else there. He had never been in such an event like this, he wanted to stay and she what it was about. _A Sol-3-style festival? Was it religious? There were so many questions that he would have to look into at a later date._

Somebody on the stage took out an acoustic guitar, skulled half of a drink, and began to play something.

“Hey, it’s not like you’re Spock’s mom, quit worrying so much,” Rand assured with a big of a laugh. 

Kirk sighed and looked down at her, “I suppose so, yes.” He opened his own beer and took a drink. It was still nice and cold, Kirk just wished that he had brought a koozie along with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You, knowing who Gaia is and what roll she usually plays in like, every single fic that she’s in: Where is she  
Me, clearly trying to cover up the fact that I’ve never seen an AOS movie in my life as I quickly close memory alpha: Orion. Doing space things. Yeah. 
> 
> -
> 
> Also I don’t actually know if corn raves like this are a real thing but like, knowing how people are I'ld bet on it. There are aliens in this story so why should the rest of it make any chronologically-relative sense. 
> 
> It’s my au I can put a 60’s corn rave in it if I want too.


	13. Smiling With Your Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s the chapter ya’ll’ve all been waiting for. You’re welcome. I'm going to go and do a maths test now. 
> 
> This chapter was based a little bit after a song from a musical, and I hope it doesn't show. Thanks to @protectspock for looking over this chapter for me, and for also lightly bullying me about being, and thus talking, like an Australian. Also Kirk 'sings' like William Shatner does and I will die by that headcanon because I'm right.

It didn’t take long until the party was in full swing. Kirk only had a few drinks, both because he was an over-responsible nerd and was driving home. For some reason, and no matter how much the guy drank, Spock didn’t get drunk. He had a couple of drinks here and there, or perhaps just the one and just held onto it, equally possible, but nothing changed. It was kinda unfair. 

Kirk caught up with a couple of old classmates and people that he had known, but he mostly kept himself close to Spock. It was quite neat to just, hang out, with Spock with drinks in hand on camping chairs. It was quite a pleasant ‘neat.’

People clapped, and another teenager came up to the jam session on the homemade stage. She was one that Kirk knew as being one of the really smart ones from school. Her black hair was in a ponytail and she wore a red and gold dress that was poofy at the bottom. It looked a little dated, but in a ‘this is going to be super retro in 20 more years’ dated. 

Kirk cupped his hands over his mouth and cheered her on, “Yeah! Go Nyota!” he yelled out with a 3-drink ‘woop.’ Uhura blew a playful kiss his way. 

Spock looked at him like he had just said a horrible pun. 

Kirk elbowed him in return, “Just wait, half the people here are going to leave when she’s done – they’re only here to hear her sing.” 

Uhura was a very skilled singer – hell, she wouldn’t have been written into this entire party if she wasn’t. Kirk just grooved along with the music, his jacket was hung on the back of his chair. 

During her first song, Spock pulled out his computer disk to check the local time, covering the glowing screen with his hand. It immediately did its best to connect to a network, instead connecting directly to the power being used for the amps and lights. Both systems flickered for a moment before Spock put it away. During this moment there was an audible ‘awhh…. yeaaah!’ of the quick disappointment of the power flickering off and on. 

If Spock had kept his computer transmitting back to his mothership on this audible frequency, maybe the rest of this story would have panned out rather differently.

Uhura finished singing and took a playful bow as classmates cheered. She had been completely undeterred about the flickering of the electrical systems. One of the guitarists said something to her away from the microphone, she nodded in response, and then took the instrument off to go and take a break. Her first mistake was letting Kirk figure out what she was going to say next. 

Kirk threw his beer down into a cardboard recycling bin near him and wiped his mouth with the side of his arm. “No-no-no-no, let me try,” he called out as he climbed up to the front of the stage before anybody was able to stop him. He took the red electric guitar off the last person to play it by the neck, as if he had never handled one before. 

Spock could feel the consensus of the crowd turned into a mix of hostile and ‘oh god somebody stop him.’ 

_ What could have been so horrible that they didn’t want him near the stage? _

Kirk started singing. 

_ Ah! That would be enough. _It wasn’t even really singing, just more power poetry in time with the guitar. If everybody else there didn’t seem to reject it or be along with it assuming it was a joke, it would have honestly been a fascinating art form to study. The type of performance that a Klingon might enjoy, for example. 

_ Well, Jim couldn’t be perfect. _Spock thought to himself as he watched on in awe. Kirk’s, uh, ‘singing,’ went on for a lot longer than it had any right too. 

“Honey,” Uhura interjected, taking the microphone away from him, “no.” 

Kirk faked a pout that turned into a kissy face. “You don’t know what you’re missin’.” 

“I can live with that,” she said with a laugh as she pushed him back from the mic. 

Kirk strummed the guitar in a different rhythm, a few of the other people still on stage joined in. Uhura began to dance along, keeping the beat with her shoulders. Kirk laughed and let the bass guitarist lead them into a song that they all recognized. Kirk wasn’t the best, or the only person on guitar, but he was good enough not to ruin it as the lead. 

Well, anything that he did was better than whatever his attempt of ‘singing’ was. Anything that he could have done after that would be considered an improvement. 

For some reason, Kirk ended up watching Spock’s hand as he played along. It almost looked like Spock was absentmindedly pressing down cords on something along with the song, tapping the rhythm with his other hand. They weren’t the same fingering as Kirk was doing, but they were clearly chords nonetheless. Kirk still had to look back at the neck of his own guitar to change keys, but every time he looked back down, Spock had changed accordingly. Spock was studying him and this alien song, without even thinking about it. The two locked eyes, and both blushed in response and looked away. 

_What were they even blushing about? There wasn’t anything for them to be embarrassed about. _

Uhura finished a chorus and then Kirk led into a solo, just doing whatever felt natural in the moment in the keys already given. People liked his playing and clapped along, but Kirk was so distracted by everything else he didn’t even notice them. 

Kirk gestured his head back to bring Spock to the stage. 

Spock winced a little in embarrassment and leaned down into the chair.

Kirk laughed as he kept on trying, “C’Mon Spock!” His voice wasn’t picked up by any microphone, but Spock could hear it fine. “Get up here!” 

Uhura was close enough to hear it, and joined in. 

It didn’t seem like Spock had much of an escape in the matter, his mind had clearly already been made up for him. The drummer bought just enough time for Spock, now more than a little hyped up by other people who had been standing at the front, to weave around to the steps and pick up the lead that was going into the microphone, roll it around his wrist to elbow as if he had done it a hundred times before, throw it on his good shoulder with one hand, and caught the microphone with the other from a happy-to-throw-it Uhura. 

The chord changed back to a nice even C and Spock started singing along with it. Kirk ‘woo’ed’ in response, making himself miss half of the first measure as he found his fingering again. 

Oh wow, Spock was good. You wouldn't have expected him to be, but he was. Nobody had any idea what he had been singing about, even if only about half of the people listening were sober enough to notice. It was actually a poem-turned-song that he had changed the key to fit the alien music, but you still wouldn’t have been able to tell that he was more or less making a lot of it up on the fly. 

The entire time, and in retrospect, it honestly couldn’t have been going on for more than half a minute, Kirk had been smiling like a huge idiot. The Spock that he knew was this quiet, really awkward, textbook kind of guy, it was almost unreal seeing him relax like this. 

Well, ‘relax’ wasn’t exactly the right word, but a better one wasn’t easy to find. Spock was singing along fine, but it was almost _too_ perfect, as if he had been practicing for it like some sort of talent show that he was forced to perform in. Nobody cared about this little detail, and it really didn’t matter in the moment, but it was still worth noticing. There was a polish to the moment that nobody else could have brought. 

Spock started to fade, fighting winces that make him miss the end of some words. Kirk’s smile disappeared alongside it. His playing began to grow the most controlled it had been all night as he waited in apprehension of what was going to happen next. 

Spock suddenly went limp, Kirk caught Spock just in time to stop him from falling right off the stage. The neck of the guitar ended up swinging around and hitting Spock in the elbow, making that same ‘thunk’ that you hear with you accidentally bump one that’s resting behind a door with that very door and then have to come to terms with the fact that you just put a massive chip in the side of a 27-year-old electric guitar because you forgot that you had put it there even though you had JUST been re-stringing it instead of writing like you should have been. 

Spock was very much feeling that sort of ‘thunk.’ He held the microphone tightly and tried to force himself into a lite healing trance to stop himself from outright fainting. The rolled-up aux cord fell off his shoulder without any second thought. 

“I got you, I got you,” Kirk repeated as he held onto Spock took a few loose steps towards the stairs off the side, but then practically threw himself off it as he vomited out onto the grass. A few people cheered for that, guessing he was just drunk. 

Spock felt better after that, but only just. 

A few more gasps of air in and Kirk guided Spock off the stage and sat him down on the grass by all the pedalboards and controls. The person who had been working there was able to offer Spock a bottle of water. If you were keeping track of where everybody was at home, that person happened to be the second of the two who had been semi-running the party. 

Kirk went back to the stage and quickly took the guitar off to give to the first person who would take from him. Kirk turned back, perhaps way too fast, and had to hold onto a beam for support for a few moments to stop the spinning. 

A day later the thought that their drinks might have been spiked by something did cross Kirk’s mind, but that didn’t even occur to him at the time. If you at home are concerned about this, rest assured that this hadn’t at all happened. 

Kirk shook off the dizziness and went back to the side of the stage, but Spock wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “Where the hell’s Spock?” Kirk asked. There was a clear mix of both panic and anger in his voice. 

The technician put his hands up in a quick surrender. “He- he said something about a car- he must have gotten to get something,” he said quickly. 

“Right! No, right,” Kirk said as he gathered his jacket and zipped it all the way up. He quickly looked around the party to try and center himself, then ran off between people to try and catch up to Spock. 

* * *

Spock was far outside of the party by the time Kirk found him. He was resting on the side of Kirk’s car, looking up at the sky. A wave of relief washed over Kirk as he saw that he was okay. Spock saw him as Kirk approached and moved over to give him space on the door next to him. 

“Sorry about all of this,” Kirk said as he joined next to Spock to stargaze. 

Spock pointed to his ear with a soft face. “Ral.”

“….Yeah,” Kirk replied, crossing his hands into himself. 

The two sat on the side of Kirk’s car for a while, looking at the stars. Kirk poked Spock on the side with his elbow, “Valk-hans-su?” he asked as he pointed upwards. 

Spock thought for a moment, his hand up ready to point to his home star. “Eeee…,” he ‘um’ed,’ Kirk waited patiently next to him for the answer. You could see the cogs in Spock’s heads turn as he tried to work out what star was what. Half of the stars were new, half of them looked upside down and rotated enough that you couldn’t even tell if they were upside down or not. Spock’s best guess was a small star that he was fairly sure was actually another one of the Sol system planets. He stopped ‘um’ing’ in defeat, and then pointed back to himself. 

Kirk laughed, making Spock smile ever-so-softly in response. The two looked back up at the sky. It was dotted with white clouds and light pollution, but the stars were all there to be seen. 

For Spock, it was the first time that the reality of the situation really sunk in. This wasn’t just another planet, it really was _ another _ planet. The stars were wrong. The concept of aliens seemed so different when you were the only one on the planet who was one. 

“It’s a pity that you’re not here for a visit, it’s a nice planet,” Kirk said with a sigh, breaking the silence once again. “There’s way more out there than just corn and bad cover bands who like to play in the corn.” 

The distance audience cheered as people got back into a musical groove, the excitement of the last five minutes was all over now. 

“Alright, I’m going to get everybody to pair off now,” Uhura said from afar. It was distant enough that it didn’t sound like a voice at all. 

A much more mellow song started. The song was distant, most of what Kirk and Spock could hear came in the form of vibrations in the dirt or from the drum player who was getting way too into it. Ever so slowly Spock began to swing his shoulders with the music. He looked tired, the peace of the moment clearly meaning a lot to him. Kirk tapped his foot to the beat, half humming along. He had only really heard it before once or twice on the radio, their version of the song had upped the tempo quite a lot. 

Kirk began to wonder what alien music was like. Was it all electronic and done by computers somehow? Did they have music there? Spock was clearly musically talented, there must have been at least something. 

“Do you know how to dance?” Kirk asked, leaning forward. 

Oh, how much better it would have been if Spock knew English. How much better would all of this be if they could at least tell the other what was going on, or how they were feeling. A ‘sorry’ here, a ‘thank you’ there, anything. 

Kirk pulled himself off the side of his car and held out his hand. Spock looked at it a little confused, before taking it. Spock’s hands were freezing cold in comparison. 

Kirk led, just ever so gently as the song continued. it took both of them a couple of awkward steps to get into the rhythm of it all. 

Spock moved his hand to hold onto Kirk’s. 

The verse was sung again. This time other people were singing along. 

Spock put his head on Kirk’s shoulder. For that brief moment in time the weight of everything that had been going on just melted away into it. It was a shame that he wasn’t here just to be here, but out of everything that could have happened, this was a good second option. 

Spock heild onto Kirk as if he didn’t know how to do it - as if he had never been hugged like this before. you could feel his bones through his thin clothes. He lifted his head up, Kirk’s eyes had been closed, but he opened them to look into Spocks. Kirk’s own were a soft brown, warm like that bit of the wooden deck in the winter sun that you move your chair over to in the early morning and end up falling back asleep in. They were freckled with what looked like flakes of gold. 

Spock’s own were stiff. He was focusing on what was happening and his bangs were doing their best to hide them away. They were dark, but distinctive. You could get lost in studying the patterns in them. They framed his face in just a way that you couldn’t miss them. 

Kirk didn’t say anything, he just looked up at Spock in awe. He didn’t even have any words that would have suited the moment. 

And just like that, Spock was pulled down into a kiss. 

Spock was surprised, but he wasn’t at all opposed to the idea. 

Kirk quickly pulled away, his hands on Spock’s shoulders. “I - oh so I’m sorry,” he stumbled to say. His face was red with a blush as he said it. “I shouldn’t have done that.” 

Neither of them moved. 

Spock just looked at him. He wasn’t angry, he had that excitement in his eyes that was impossible to fake. Kirk couldn’t tell if what he was feeling was from himself or Spock. 

_ There it was. Spock smiled with his eyes. _

If it was at all possible, you could have sworn that the shine in Spock's eyes had turned into stars. Perhaps it was just the reflections of the nights that Kirk was seeing, but it didn’t feel like it. 

Spock coughed into his elbow, and then held his palm out for Kirk to hold. 

Kirk looked at Spock’s hand much in the same way that Spock had looked at his. 

“Tou-ch?” Spock asked softly. 

Kirk took it, their fingers tightly intertwining. It felt as if a jolt of energy ran up his spine as it happened. 

it was nice. 

Spock looked at their hands and then at Kirk, in the nighttime light it was almost impossible to tell that his cheeks were now blushing a dark green. Nothing else around them felt real, all that mattered was the two of them in the moment. 

“Hey, do you two want to crash the UFO site with us?” A voice asked them, way to close _ not _ to have been weird. 

Kirk jumped with a high-pitched yelp, the two lovebirds turning around and letting go of each other as if they had been caught making out in the locker room. It was Chekov and another guy, with Chekov being the one who had asked. 

Wait – hang on, Kirk knew that other guy, he had been the florist he had talked to a few days ago. He was a year or two younger than Kirk was, and in a jacket covered in gold sequins, for some reason. 

“It’s not a UFO,” Kirk insisted with a huff as he fixed down his jacket. 

“Yeah and? It totally is,” Chekov protested with a smile and a bit of a bounce. “Hikaru and I are going to go and see how close we can get to it all before they start shooting at us.”

“Or just chase us away,” Sulu replied, giving his younger companion a bit of a sideways glance. 

“Hey, if you’ve got something better to do tonight then do et,” Chekov said back as he started to walk backwards closer to Kirk’s car, “But I’m not staying here.” 

Kirk moved in behind him to stop him from touching it, “Hey.” 

Chekov looked up at Kirk. “So? Doya want to come or not?” he asked. 

Kirk gave him a leer, looked at Spock, and then sighed with his fingers on the bridge of his nose. “Why does it have to be with _ my _ car?” 

“’Cause I don’t have one, Captin’.” 

Kirk couldn’t really rebut that. “Don’t call me that,” he ordered softly with a smile.

Chekov turned around, almost losing his footing as he did it. “Ye don’t_ really _ wanna stay around here, do you?” He asked, “nothing’s gonna happen if you do. Somebody has already vomited right off za platform, so I don’t think that we’re going to miss anything if we don’t stick around,” He pointed his arms to the crash site, “Plus, we would be crazy _ not _ too. It’s right there!” Chekov had also pointed right at Spock as he talked, poking him in the chest as he accented his point. Chekov and Spock looked at each other. “Hi,” Chekov said, looking at the typo of a man before him. 

“Tonk'peh,” Spock greeted in return, pushing Chkeov’s hand away. 

“Pavel this is Spock – Spock this is Pavel. He’s a friend of mine and I met this guy a couple of days ago,” Kirk introduced quickly, not explaining who was supposed to be what. He looked over at the fourth person in the conversation, and this is…..” Kirk clicked his fingers and pointed them to Sulu. “I _ do _ remember you! I _ knew _ I did! You’re the guy who had the sword at Sylvia's party last year! I still have that scar.” 

“….You have a sword?” Chekov gasped like somebody who shouldn’t be given a sword as he began to break into Kirk’s car. 

“Oh, well,” Sulu mumbled to himself with a blush, realizing that he still wasn’t free of that night, “it wasn’t really that big of a deal anyways.” 

“It was the best part of the whole night, don’t worry about it,” Kirk reminisced with a smile. 

The horn of Kirk’s car beeped. Chekov pushed himself out from under the slowly-opening roof, he looked quite silly doing it. “So do you two want to stay here or go and do something better with us?”

“Get out!” Kirk said as he opened the driver’s door, “Shoo. I would have been happy to open that for you." 

Chekov complied with his hands up. 

“Don’t be so eager to throw yourself into trouble,” Kirk lectured. “this isn’t just another property to fuck around on, this is serious.”

“Yes, exactly,” Chekov replied with a half-sober smile. “We’ll be kicking ourselves in the butt for the rest of our lives if we don't at least try.”

Kirk’s face didn’t change.

Chekov leaned on the side of Kirk’s car. “Okay, put it this way - you could come to prove yourself right. Do you have a camera?”

“Why would I have a camera on me? Who does that?” Kirk asked, “and that was nothing at all to do with what you’re proposing.”

“I dare you,” Chekov finished with a smile. 

Kirk blinked. “I’m being bullied by a fourteen-year-old to go and trespass on a government site.”

“Fifteen-,” Chekov corrected as he squatted by the back of the car and took out a screwdriver from the inside of his jacket. 

Kirk was lost for words, he was almost impressed at the conference of this guy. It looked like Kirk’s mind had already been made up for him on the matter. He looked back at Spock, who was watching Chekov do whatever the hell he was doing with the same expression he had watched Kirk’s ‘singing’ with. 

Kirk could keep fighting the reality of it all like he had been, or accept the fact that this was the only place that Spock _ really _needed to be. Spock needed to contact his people, stat, and to do that he had to get to his ship. If this part of the narrative was going to happen, it might as well happen now while they’re both still able to drive away to safety. 

Kirk sighed alright. “Alright, lets-”

_ Thunk. _

The back license plate from Kirk’s car was thrown into the seats. Chekov could feel Kirk looking into him. “Ets so they can’t run the plate if they see us while driving away,” he explained with a concerning amount of ease. 

“Do you always have a screwdriver on you for that?” Kirk asked. 

“More or less, yes.”

“This is a normal pastime for you, isn’t it.”

“Yep.”

“Righto," Kirk accepted with a clap. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> > "[Hi/hey/yo, such as like an informal greeting,]” Spock greeted in return, pushing Chkeov’s hand away.


	14. Moonshine Runnin' - Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 0130 at the time of me posting this, so I'll go over it again in the morning if there are any super glaring issues that I missed in the process. 
> 
> I was stuck for ages on this next chapter, and then a few days ago it was just BAM 1k one day and then another 2.5k a few nights after and then all of a sudden I had a two-part chapter all ready to go. The power of finding the right song to write to, holy shit. Part 2 will come out next week, unless I cave in and post it early.

_True-Crime Podcasters Become a Case of Their Own  
_ _By Desmond Soong_

Two true-crime podcast hosts, the first, Gene Azoic, 20, an apprentices electrician, and the second, Richard Cawson Jr, aged 21, a stage productions major at Talamric-Tec, were finally officially declared missing by East Dakotan and Iowan police as of this morning following their failure to be reached or seen in public for over two weeks after leaving for a week-long road trip together.

Cawson and Azoci were roommates, and worked in partnership on a true-crime podcast titled ‘Planet 3.’ Plant 3 was a fairly lighthearted weekly show written, produced and narrated by the pair that focused on the oculate and the supernatural, and only on occlusal took on real true-crime cases with a more serious tone when there was a relevant conspiracy could be linked.

Their last published episode was titled, and had been centred on, ‘The Disappearance of James T Kirk,’ a decades-old cold case about an Iowan teen who disappeared in late April, 1969. Announcements on both their personal and podcast-related social media accounts as well as a comment made by both a the 15:35 mark of the episode in question indicated that the two had headed to the town that contained last known sighting of the late Kirk for a ‘follow-up’ episode of the case, a practice that was fairly common event for special episodes of their show.

Both Cawson and Azoic had last been seen on security footage on the 17th of the two leaving a motel with all of their processions three days before their pre-paid stay was due to end. Other footage and witness accounts as they moved around the town to various shops and tourist locations during their stay prior showed no signs of concern from either, even conducting a brief interview with a local resident, Janice Peterson-Rand, who had once been a key whiteness in the Kirk disappearance, on the 16th. On being interviewed again Mrs Peterson-Rand recalled no points of note about either of the men, citing as them as being ‘fairly eccentric and working with a passion on their project.’ 

Their car was later found in the early morning of the 20th in a truck stop parking area roughly 10 miles from the southern Ionian border – neither seen anywhere near around the stop by either human witnesses or CCTV due to neither approaching the built section of the stop. Their personal items and equipment, consisting of a small camera drone, two laptops, and recording audio equipment, was still in the boot of the car with the rest of their belongings when police searched the vehicle.

The two cases, theirs and the one that they had gone down to Iowa to study, are no considered to be related in any way.

Police are currently looking for a-

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_>close. _

_>continue? _

_…._

_>yeah, okay. Let’s just get back to the story now, shall we?_

* * *

Gabriel Lorca was the type of man that stuck in the back of your mind like those little stickers that you find on apples. Not because he was super memorable, quite the opposite in fact, but you didn’t need a lot to be reminded that he was there. He was a taller, middle-aged and unmarried white man who only recently decided to remove a long-standing blond moustache and who spent most of his shifts camping out behind speed traps and always seemed to be just a year off becoming chief of police of the entire county.

Kirk wasn’t the biggest fan of the man, mostly because he always seemed to fall for those traps. Like, you can’t hide behind a billboard out nowhere near civilization and come out just to ticket people, and _then _expect them to be happy to see you when you are both getting coffee at the same place the next morning, right? It didn’t make sense.

Perhaps he did it _because _it was so far away from anybody else. Come to a nightshift, hang out in your car somewhere with a book waiting for a call, go back after an empty shift since the town is too small for any real problems to come up, and still get a paycheck without having to deal with the hot sun. Hell, it worked. I’m making the man just sound like just like a dodgy Starfleet officer-turned dodgy cop to suit a narrative purpose, but that’s just important information and the general vibe that’s good to put down in words. Not a ‘_villain’_ exactly, but it wouldn’t have been hard for him to play one if he wanted too.

The night of Spock’s ship crash he had been close enough to become the first officer at the scene, and very quickly took the project over as his own. He had even seen the tail of the ship flying past in all its on-fire glory, and instead of being able to call in a meteorite crash, he was asked to file an arson report. It was strange, but he went along with it for the paperwork.

Since we all know that it wasn’t actually arson, there wasn’t much that he could have done directly to help - and since there weren’t any laser gun-wielding little green men with antenna running around the site, Lorca was simply there holding fort until the real professionals arrived. By day three of the whole operation (so, now, if you count the late-night crash as the first) he was still just waiting for more to happen. His biggest bit of concern right now was that block party not too far away filled with the exact sort of people that you would want to keep out of the lot. It wasn’t like he could just walk up there and tell them to close it down - that would be suspicious for a start. Still, nobody had tried to sneak in yet, and there were guards posted outside to stop them.

At this moment in time, Lorca was reading a paper on the Roswell crash in his little temporary office, keeping everything tied over. He was a night owl anyways, it didn’t bother him much. A buzz came over the radio that was on his desk.

* * *

If you’ve never seen four slightly drunk teenagers try and sneak into a government restricted site with nothing more than a recently washed convertible and an innate boyhood desire to fuck around, then strap in because you’re about too.

Getting up there wasn’t hard, a gap in the fence here and a gate that wasn’t closed there let them drive all the way up until a small hill by the back of the property that overlooked everything. The gang, since I guess it could be called one now, hung around the car and the ditch of the hill and watched everything go down. No spotlight was facing them, and they just had a construction site-style temporary fence to deal with.

What last week was a just a sea of still-green corn stalks now looked like it was getting ready to set up what could have been mistaken for a mobile army surgical unit. Clear paths had been made in the dirt (some of it still muddy from the rain the night before) to get trucks in and out of the clearing, and a mix of army tents and dismountable buildings in clusters around it. Whoever the people who had been called in to handle the tents had been they sure as hell knew what they were doing and acted fast. Kirk just felt bad for the guy who owned the farm. Did insurance cover this sort of thing? If the government had a hand in the destruction, it didn’t seem likely.

Right smack in the middle was the biggest of the tents, and their best bet as to where Spock’s ship had landed. There were plastic tubes connecting each tent to one another, large enough for people to walk to and from without tracking mud around. If aliens had any rules about not being noticed by natives, then, uh. Oh no. Too late now. Kirk bit his lower lip and looked at over at Spock, Spock was standing just a little above Chekov, that same calculating look in his eyes that cats get right before they jump off a counter. Chekov had a similar look, but it was clear that he was just excited to be there. 

“Voah,” Chekov said softly, his accent clipping through.

Yeah, I guess ‘voah’ worked.

Sulu had been standing next to the car, “That’s a lot more people down there than I thought there would have been.”

“Yeah - nah way,” Kirk commented without much of a reason too, “That’s more people than there even was yesterday, you’re right.”

Spock stood up and said something in Vulcan as he untied and re-put on his coat, popping the collar up so it went up to his nose. In his all-black (the hair in front of his eyes included) it was almost impossible to see him in the dark. He looked at kirk and gestured towards the site with the same head motions that Kirk had used on him to get him up to the stage to perform.

Kirk shook his head and mouthed a large ‘_no_’ back.

Spock jumped over the dirt like a gymnast and moved in closer, regardless if anybody was going to follow him. Chekov followed, but with a lot less grace. Kirk and Sulu exchanged looks and then ran after.

The gang had all slipped through a break in the fencing, and then poked themselves around the side of a tent towards the back, making sure they didn’t cast any shadows onto it. There was the constant hum of generators and the smell of disinfectant everywhere, as well as the faint chatter of people talking. The whole site was buzzing with activity, even if it looked like most of those who would normally be there had already left for the night.

The party that they had just left was still in view over in the distance. People cheered over something.

Spock picked out his little computer from the inside of his jacket, flicked it open with a flick of his wrist like a late 2000’s flipphone with a broken hinge, checked something on it, and then reported something that sounded super important to Kirk who was up close next to him.

Kirk didn’t know what that meant. “What?” He repeated softly.

Spock thought for half a moment. He brought up his hand and moved it across Kirk’s eye level as if it was holding a tiny ship. He made a faint purring sound from deep in his chest as he did it.

“Your ship, yeah,” Kirk said with a smile.

Spock went back to looking at what he had been scanning.

Chekov tugged on Kirk’s jacket sleeve, he still had his sunglasses on and hadn’t seen the glowing screens of Spock’s little setup.

“What’s wrong?” Kirk asked. 

“This is the single coolest thing that I’ve ever done.”

“…You don’t get out much, do you?” There was a beat. “Where’s Spock?” Kirk said quietly, coming to the realization that Spock wasn’t up close next to him anymore.

Spock was actually just across the dirt road, looking into another tent. Kirk had to stop himself from screaming out – the stress of the moment was starting to dig into him like a too-tight seatbelt.

You could see the colour drain out of Kirk’s face. “_Spock_,” He hissed in an attempt to stop himself from all-out crying out, _“get back_.”

Thankfully for Spock, he didn’t know any English. Not that he was going to listen to him, anyways.

The door to the tent that they were leaning on opened with a rattle. Kirk panicked, pulling Chekov in behind a storage crate, holding him tight enough to make sure he neither said anything nor moved. Sulu also ducked in by them, the three terrified that whomever had walked out was going to see them and get them arrested for trespassing.

Kirk looked up, the light of a spotlight giving a halo around their hair. Hang on _– holy shit that was Lorca, full uniform and all. He’d been right! This place had that cop all over it_

Chekov moved Kirk’s hand off his face and took a breath. “Spock,” he whispered up at Kirk, Spock was looking at Lorca, too, and was sneaking further and further away from the group while still sticking to the shadows. Kirk just grit his teeth harder. Spock’s eyes reflected back like a cat’s in what little light was shining towards him.

A white, marked (for a tv news channel, funny enough) van drove by on the road before them, stopping just in front of Lorca. There was commotion coming from inside, arguing, perhaps, and then the side door opened as if it belonged to a teenager’s room after the teen inside was asked to go and do the dishes.

A man came out of the van. He was fairly short and looked like he had either just been woken up from a nap or had been kidnapped and brought there against his will. A long brown fringe hid strikingly baby blue eyes, and had the same sort of hazmat-y sort of overcovering’s that everybody else there was in. it looked like he was in a light blue shirt underneath. He had bookbag in his hand with the shoulder strap loose and hanging to the ground.

Kirk got a good look at the man, he didn’t look friendly.

There isn’t much of a point in me trying to act like this newly introduced character isn’t just Dr Leonard McCoy, and you would be right in assuming that it was. ‘Just a simple country doctor’ my ass, the man already works with aliens in cannon. McCoy didn’t look like he wanted to be there, but whatever the series of events had lead up to this he still went along with it.

“Look here! I’m a _doctor_, not a forensics officer,” he said with an annoyed rasp before Lorca could great him.

“….You’re a xenobiologist,” Lorca corrected as the bookbag was forcefully handed to him. No hello or a briefing, just a straight cut to the augment.

“Then where’s the body?” Dr McCoy said in a Southern (southern as in ‘bless your heart’ being used as the worst possible insult one could say to another) American accent. “I can’t do anything without its body, well, not ‘nything useful.”

“We’re still attending to that, and we didn’t start off with one – just its ship.”

McCoy closed the rolling door of the van behind him with a soft slam. “Fantastic, this site is as badly managed as Dr Burnham said that it would be.” 

Lorca grit his teeth and rolled his eyes before he followed Dr McCoy back into the tent. The van that had brought McCoy in drove away and deeper into the compound.

Kirk allowed himself to exhale. It didn’t make him feel all that much better, but at least Lorca was gone. He looked to Sulu next to him and then groaned. “Stop being excited about this.”

Sulu was smiling. “They have forensic officers on the scene.”

“He’s a doctor,” Kirk said straightly. “He literally just said that.”

“And a spaceship,” Chekov piped up, still more or less being bear-hugged by Kirk.

“We’re going to get _so_ arrested,” Kirk admitted with a fearful groan.

_Alright Jim, focus. You’ve dealt with worse. _

Spock was still apart from the group. Again, yeah, but now this was worse. Now Kirk couldn’t see him at all.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?


	15. Moonshine Runnin' - Part 2

Spock saw the white ‘news’ van pull up between him and the human ¾ of the group and overheard the doctor’s rant into Lorca’s ‘office.’ He watched the van move onwards and further into the complex, and followed behind it - being as careful as he could to stick to the shadows. He was a Vulcan on a mission, now.

The site itself couldn’t have been bigger in area than a football field – not that Spock knew what that was. Everything was condensed together and looked to be still to be in construction. Spock quickly checked his computer with it still tucked into his shirt, snuck his way through another dirt road and past more of the tents. The longer this sneaking went on the louder his fluttering heartbeat was in his head.

He braced himself behind a power generator, it smelt like a car but worse – it must all use the same sort of fuel, he assumed. Somebody with one of those hazmat-esk suits, the kind that McCoy had arrived in, walked out of the largest text with the suit tied around his waist while talking to another person who was in day clothing. It didn’t look like anybody there seemed to care enough to actually use those things as directed, either that or the humans didn’t consider the site to be dangerous enough to have them be required in use at all times.

Either_ that_, or their superior wasn’t in view of them yet and thus could get away with being lax

The ship that Spock had arrived in was in that tent.

Spock sprinted across the road once he knew nobody was looking and then ducked himself behind a large mechanic’s work tray full of tools. He slowed his breathing with a hand to his cheek and then took a good look at the rest of the inside.

‘Spock’s’ ship was still in one piece, the top-opening door was still wide open, square patches had been cut out of the seat’s covering– likely patches where Spock had bleed on and then taken away for further analyst. The charred vegetation that had surrounded the ship had all been cleared away, but a lot of the ash would have been stomped into the compacted soil underneath the crinkling tarp that everybody was walking on. The ship wasn’t in the middle of the tent, but more protected away in one of the corners with the bulk of the open area being used more for workstations for people going over bits of the ship that either had fallen or been taken off. There was a small selection of tables’ already in use and even more in a stack in another corner. 

There was police tape from about a meter all around the ship to as to not allow anybody to get close, and a thick plastic sheeting coming off the ceiling of the tent between the tape and ship, and then next to the wall behind it, around like a bubble. There was a small break in the sheeting’s attachment to the wall, thankfully the same wall that Spock was hiding next too. It looked like it was being kept there with Velcro.

The open space of the tent was over where the burnt impact trail of the ship colliding with the ground was. It was a reasonable assumption that they would have taken soil samples of the area before everything else had been set up. It didn’t make _as much_ sense when I think about it for how it _was_ all setup, but it needed to be set up that way so that this chapter would work. 

One of the panels on the side of the ship facing away from the clearing had been opened, with the burnt cover-panel being on a table across the room. It was the same area that Spock had gotten shot at that caused him to crash in the first place. It was clear that somebody had already messed around with the mechanics of the ship, or at the very least had a pretty good look into it

Spock held his breath, using every sense he had at his arsenal to find the perfect gap in time go over to it. He carefully connected his disk to the ship - the two didn’t sync, why? Was it _that_ broken? If the ship had sent out any signals out as the humans had messed with it, he would have been the first to have known. One of the humans that had been standing directly between the Spock and the ship on gaud stretched, and then walked to the side to get some coffee. He was dressed in full military gab with a red shirt underneath. A Redshirt, if you will.

It was now or never as Spock scuttled over to be behind the ship through the detached part of the plastic curtain. Spock could practically hear the sound of Kirk’s voice hissing at him not to do it

It was not a happy voice.

The gaud picked up on the sound of Spock moving the plastic, but after a moment of keeping still and listing, he relaxed and took a careful sip of his drink. It must have been the wind, or something.

Spock took his eyes off the gaud and then down into the exposed area of the ship. _It – wait, hang on. _Spock paused for a moment. Somebody had, _what? Fixed it_? A few bits and bobs in it didn’t look Vulcan at all, they had to be Human with such brightly coloured wire casing like that and such poor cable management. Somebody who knew what they had been doing hadn’t fixed the ship to fly again, or so they could extract any information from its computer, but only just enough so that an electronic flare could be set out.

And they hadn’t even done that yet.

With humans being (presumably) diurnal, perhaps whoever had been working on the computer had already retired for the night? It wasn’t an impossible idea. Still, it had been just been _left there_ for anybody to mess with.

Was Spock going to be the one who messed with it?

He might as well be.

One of the newly installed wires, perhaps the most important one in that whole system, was hanging away from its corresponding port. Being careful to only touch the bright blue casing Spock pushed it into the contact port, the soft kenotic metal around it acting as a cold sorter and held it in place. Spock looked into the cockpit, a danager-green standby light under a semi-solid cover made of clear algae (there so that button was harder to press on accident) was on. Fantastic.

Spock didn’t have a chance to send out a proper distress signal when he had crassed, he had been much more focused on not dying and at all the smoke coming out of the dashboard at the time. Hopefully, the ship had kept on transmitting its location right until it landed. Regardless, the motion to send out one had still been started. He reached over and into the cockpit, feeling the buttons at his disposal while trying to remember what each one did. The flyer had a very standard design and layout – just like how you could drive any car regardless of what car you learnt to drive in. Vulcans liked to make all of their ships practically the same like that.

Seriously! How the hell did the _one_ place on the ship that the aliens shoot through just happen to be the most important bit to him? That was just being mean, if anything.

The guard with the coffee made eye contact with Spock as Spock was still pushing in some commands on the ship’s dashboard. Spock blinked at him, his stomaching dropping lower into his gut than his heart was. The coffee was placed on a counter and the guard reached for his radio like a gunslinger in a bad western.

Spock looked back and forth between the two. Dashboard, human guard, dashboard, human guard.

_Huh. _

Well okay then; that settles what Spock’s next move was going to be.

Spock used all of his strength to punch in the standby light under the algae, all of the lights on the ship lighting up, sparking, and then letting out the strongest electronic pulse that Spock had experienced in-person since disaster desensitizing training.

The power all around him flickered, Spock held tightly onto the sides of his beanie as he tried to stop himself from screaming from the flare going off so close to him, he could feel his ears popping. The humans there did the same, that guard dropping his radio – it didn’t look like it was going to work again after this. Spock’s computer buzzed aggressively as it picked up the signal, and that was just its response to the low-energy, high-travel distance sub pulse that was underneight all of the noise that was the whole point of the transmission. If there was any Vulcan tech between here and this planet’s moon, it was going to pick up on it. Neither humans nor Vulcans could hear that one.

The ordeal only lasted a few seconds.

Everybody else in the tent absolutely noticed Spock being there after that. A gun or two got brought out as the humans started shouting things that Spock couldn’t even begin to translate. More voices came from behind him from the outside of the tent. Spock let go off the ship and felt to the ground, dirt getting all over his chest. The shouting just go worse.

Spock stood up using just his knees. He touched the nose of the ship for support, and he just got yelled at again. _Okay then! He won’t do that._

More uniforms, only a few of the mob being police, showed up.

It didn’t matter what Spock did, either in walking towards the humans or reaching for his computer, he just kept on getting yelled at. They were clearly giving him instructions and demanding him to reply.

Spock put his hands up above his head, that seemed to quiet them down a little. He winced and lowered his injured one back down, hopefully they could excuse that, it was still in a sling and everything after all. He looked at all the alien faces before him, none of them wanting to get close. He could only recognize one of them, a police officer with red hair towards the back.

“Hey! I know that kid,” April said aloud as he remembered back to the traffic control shift that he had taken the day before, “He ain’t a local.” 

Spock chewed on the words he would have said to them if there was any point in saying anything. He caught a glance towards the flyer, no sound and no moment. All he could do was wish that all this work and risk was worth it.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

There was the distant yet still rather distinctive sound of sports car approaching the tent. Spock was the first to notice it.

The next instant felt like it happened in slow-motion, and it was pity that it couldn’t have been seen as that. Spock cracked a small smile, put his good arm out before him, and it was met with another arm hanging out of a car as it drove right through the tent. The two hands locked together holding forearms as Spock was pulled _into_ the moving car by Kirk, whom had been leaning out of the side towards him. Spock got thrown up and hit his head on the back of the front seats, landing in the footrests with his legs up in the air. Kirk himself gotten thrown into the front passenger seat on top of Chekov from the force of lifting Spock up. The car had skirted between Spock and the rest of the people, thankfully not hitting a single one of them on its path.

The whole movement would have been pretty dam cool to watch if it hadn’t of hurt so much to both teens involved. The car took out half of the main tent along with it on its way out, the plastic sheet that had been shielding the ship got ripped off and caught in one of the convertible’s wheel’s, causing the whole tent fall in the same direction and on top of everybody was still in it.

Sulu made a sharp drift to avoid hitting somebody on the road and then another to avoid taking out a different tent. Everybody in the car got thrown around as it happened, aside from Sulu, who was wearing a seatbelt.

Spock screamed out the equivalent of _‘what the FUCK is going on?!’_ in Vulcan. He felt like he was going to vomit again.

What was going on, Spock, was that you were being rescued. Be quite.

Kirk lifted himself upright and looked behind them, digging an unknowing knee into Chekov’s thy as he did it. “Uhhhh guys - we got company,” he reported. A gun went off in their direction. It wasn’t a warming shot, it was just lucky that it missed them.

Sulu checked the rear-view mirror. “Noted,” he commented as he changed gear. It was like the guy was in a trance as he drove with the same precision and control as a professional stunt racer. The car drifted sideways in between the two semitrailers that would have used to bring all of the tents to the location, and then drove off straight in the opposite direction as before. Kirk looked out to the site and the back at the driver. “How the hell did you do that?” He shouted over the wind. On either side of the trailers was just more of that temporary fencing, making it nearly impossible for any to follow them in the same way.

Sulu just smiled. “I know what I’m doing,” he said before making yet another sharp turn, Spock being thrown right-way-around and to the other side of the car as it happened, the force making him surrender what little was left in his stomach onto the muddied outside of the car. You would think that a guy who has spent so much time on spaceships would have better sea legs than this, but alas.

Vulcan ships also weren’t being driven by some sort of professional maniac, at least.

Kirk’s car was carving its own path in the once unaffected half of the field. Sirens sounded after then, Sulu slowed the car down with a heavy foot on the break, and as soon as the sirens where close he turned the car around and just drove right between them all and back towards the site. Chekov practically cackled and flipping the cars off as it happened. Kirk had to hold onto the nape of his jacket so he wouldn’t fall out as he had leaned out of the car to do it.

The car drove around the containment site, and then got a grip on the dirt road that Kirk would have laid the groundwork for a few nights before.

Kirk laughed and gave Spock a rough hug over the bridge between the front and back seats, almost getting the alien in a headlock. He looked him in the eyes with his hands on Spock’s shoulders, any pain transference at work withstanding. Kirk’s smile _easily_ took up the entire lower half of his face. “That actually worked!” he called out with a laugh, “That actually fucking _worked_! Holy shit!”

Chekov ‘woo’ed!’ with him, still leaning half out of the car to try and give Kirk some room in their anciently shared seat. “I lied!” he called out, “_This _is the single coolest thing that I’ve ever done!”

Sulu turned onto the road, shifted up another gear, and then took a detour away from the town centre down one of the back roads at a T-intersection. The sirens at the scene still struggling to find the road, judging by how little Kirk could see of them

“I don’t believe it!” Kirk kept on yelling after letting go of Spock and pulling his hands through his wind blown hair. “I just – how! You were there! I just knew that you were! AHah!” He cheered again as if he couldn’t fully comprehend what had just happened. “Oh! We are in _so_ much trouble!”

Spock caught his hand on the rolled-down back window to stop himself from falling over again. He took a few more breaths and then called out into the air in the same way that Kirk had done, letting himself smile with a small laugh after. This was all so _utterly_ insane.

Kirk ‘woo!’ed again at that, pumping his arm up. All of that excitement on his face suddenly got swapped with straight-up fear. “Oh _shit _we need an alibi – we’re in so much trouble."

“I know a guy,” Chekov assured, “He’s just a little ahead up here.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanna give a shoutout to those people who comment on every chapter or so, I would be lying to say that I'm not semi-obsessively always checking for you after I post a new chapter. :^) Y/N likes the new chapter. I did a good thing. Hell yeah valadaaaaation. 
> 
> ALSO! While you're still here: This isn't really anything 'official,' but here's a playlist of the music I usually listen to on repeat while writing this thing. I thought that I might as well share it. For a fic set in the 60's it has a remarkably small sampling of music from that time I'ld have to admit that.  
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4SsKoycIhww0SG58YDypKT?si=WaERhVJiTMmY0wLaSi9oTA


	16. I Know For a FACT What I'm Here to Look For

Chekov directed Sulu though the backroads and around to the other side of town to a small mechanic’s place. Just out of the way that you would pass it on your way in from that direction, and with smaller properties around it, but close enough that it wasn’t out of your way to get too.

The building itself was a median-sized garage with a house/office section attached to the side, and a small number of cars parked in the lot around it; it looked like it could have once been a barn maybe 60, 70 years ago. The town’s impound lot was right next door and had a couple of piles of scraps in a corner. There was a lone billboard hosted between the two lots, Kirk looked up at the sign, it had been hand-painted a long time ago and read ‘Scotty’s Mechanics.’ The slightly-peeling colour in the lettering was blue and white like the Scottish flag and had a few lights at the top shining down that were attracting a handful of moths.

Only a few of the lights in the building were still open, and they looked like they had been coming from the back of the house; the office-y area of the complex. There was a couple of old fold-out chairs on the concrete veranda that surrounded it, and what looked like a long folded up marque off to the side under a sun-bleached cover. It wasn’t run out, but it showed its age.

The gang all got out of the car, everybody leaving by opening the doors normally, except for Kirk, who just jumped out and over the door. Chekov dug into his jacket and gave Spock his screwdriver, Spock took it and started to put back on the license plates, starting with the back one.

Chekov jogged up and rung the doorbell to the building. He waited, and nothing came of it. He run it again. Waited, waited, waited, nah. Half a second before the third ring the door opened with a bit of a clunk.

“We need an alibi,” Chekov said straight and quick as soon as there was somebody there to talk too.

Standing before them in the doorway, was a 30-something white man who fighting to stay awake, regardless of the car of beer in the non-door-opening hand. He had both a knit sweater and a jacket on, fingerless gloves, and a loose beanie on his head under scruffy dark blond hair. He looked at Chekov, at the rest of the group, and then Kirk’s car. Spock was already done re-attaching the plates, and he had gotten both of them upside down.

You can’t blame the man, really, it’s not like he could read them.

“What the hell did ye do this time?” he demanded, a very thick Scottish accent coming through – it was even thicker than Chekov’s, even if I’m not writing it as such. Accents are hard to write and I trust that you can fill in the gaps with them here. Kirk suddenly felt more scared in that moment than he had ever felt back in military school.

“Please,” Chekov said quickly, “it’s _really _important.”

Montgomery Scot, or just simply ‘Scotty,’ closed his eyes, sighed, and then pressed something behind the door that opened up the garage.

* * *

The front door took you first into the big work area, and then another door a step up took you into the rest of the building. It was a little nicer on the inside than the outside, much more warm and welcoming.

Kirk looked around – the ceiling was high and there were car parts and stray tools on every surface he could see. There was a faded Scottish flag in a corner being used as a curtain and a corkboard by one of the walls that was covered in almost completely blue postcards and a bunch of brown faded newspaper clippings. The car hoist in the middle of the garage was currently empty, thankfully. Kirk could see an old fridge by the garage doorway, and guessed (fairly correctly, actually) that it was mostly for beer or cans of lemonade. Oh, _ye need a tire changed? Grab a drink and chill outside by the old plastic chairs or something for a bit and I’ll sort that out for ya._

Honestly, if the place was on the route it sort of felt like that would have also been covered with rout 66 merch.

Scotty closed the front door with a clink and the clapped his hands together. “…. So?”

Chekov had already offered himself an orange soda from the beer fridge and was standing in big the doorway under the now open garage doors. He seemed to be scooting over the horizon for something. “Can you see them?” He asked nobody in particular.

Sulu listened out for a moment. “Not yet.”

Scotty changed his gaze towards Sulu as he was handed the keys to Kirk’s car. “Do I _want_ to know what you two have done this time?”

“It’s nothing too bad, Mr Scott,” Chekov said as he walked back in, “honest.”

“Why do you only come here to lie to me?”

Chekov shrugged with a sheepish smile. “’Cause you’re nice to me?”

Spock was over at another corner of the building, checking and fixing himself out by a mirror on the wall near a workbench. His hair and beanie where all over the place, and his black top was covered in dead grass and mud. He patted away as much of the muck that he was able to, be knew it all finally needed an actual wash. He suddenly stopped still, halfway through pulling his fringe back under his hat.

His eyes dilated like a cat's, and he felt his body go cold. Spock turned towards the doorway, an ear almost flickered as he listened out for something that the other couldn’t hear.

Scotty was the one to notice this. “That looks to be our que,” he looked at the rest of the teens, “Run.”

* * *

Over by the party from chapters 12 and 13, everybody was still groovin’ and having fun. More weed was being smoked, and the music being played was slowly getting worse. It was no doubt getting louder, but it was still worse.

The second of the hosts, the blond one, paused what he was doing and patted down the inside of his jacket after feeling a buzz coming from inside. He pulled out a disk that looked strikingly like Spock’s one if you had left it untouched in the ground for 60 years. The host made sure that nobody was looking his way and then checked its inbuilt display. His face fell. “Ah shit,” he said to himself quietly.

The first of the hosts had been over by the entrance dancing to some music. He had about 7 of those entrance bands spread out on his arms; it almost looked as if every time he had found a new colour in the bag he had put the one on himself. At least now he doesn’t really have to worry about not being allowed back in if he lost one, I suppose.

The second began to furiously wave him down. The first didn’t notice for another half a verse.

“Azoic you _moron - _look at me,” the second half-whispered as he kept on trying to get his attention. The first finally waved back at him, not realizing how serious his partner was being.

The second furiously pointed to his disk in his hand, the other looked at it and his smile faded a little. The first mouthed a ‘what?’ and the second replied in turn with semi-frantic mimed ‘yes!!!!!’

The first excused himself through and around the people in the clearing dancing and met the second at the equipment by the stage. “What happened?”

“We’ve missed ‘em,” The second hissed, showing the first whatever notification the disk had just gotten and then shoving it back into his pocket for safekeeping.

“…How?” His partner hissed back. “How could we hav-“

There was the screeching sound of the worst feedback you’ve ever heard in your life, followed by all the lights and electronics in use there freaking out. A few people screamed the commotion, but the flickering only went on for a few moments before it all returned back to normal. The computer screen in the second’s coat could be seen glowing through the fabric during all of the flickering.

The two hosts looked at each other and nodded. It was showtime.

“Cops!” the first host yelled out to the crowd. He ran back to his table and took out a wooden baseball bat that had been under it before he began to hit the side of a trash can to get everybody’s attention. “Cops are coming! Everybody shut up and pay attention to me!”

There was a mild scramble as people began to hide their leftover weed and skull the rest of their drinks, others even making a break for it entirely in their cars. It’s not like anybody was doing anything super doper illegal, they just had just panicked.

Janice Rand had been hanging out on a mattress on one of the car trays. She looked around at the commotion before jumping down from the side and running back in. She got the attention of one of the people packing up with a grab of his elbow. “Where’s Jim?”

“Jim?” The guy she had gotten the attention of, the second host, asked. His arms were full of boxes of his kit and rolled-up wires, and was putting a couple of expensive-looking guitar pedals away in a duffel bag on his shoulder.

“James Kirk – blond, kinda short, alarmingly defined eyebrows?” Rand quickly explained, “He was with another person – we all came in together but I can’t see him anywhere.”

“Uhhhhh…,” the second host thought for a second, “he and that Vulcan guy left about an hour ago, I think,” he answered with an unsure shrug, putting another bit of equipment under his chin. “Not sure what happened to them after that, sorry.”

“Okay – that’s alright - thank you!” Rand said quickly with a nod and a pat on his shoulder before she ran off.

The second went back to packing away his things. Almost ten entire seconds passed before he realized what he had said. “Ah fuck. We _didn’t_ miss him,” he cursed to himself.

* * *

Back over in the present, there was a knock at the door. Not the doorbell, just a fast knock with a purpose to it. To everybody’s shock and surprise, it was Lorca with his police hat and everything. Somehow Pike still filled it out a lot better than he did.

Pike is still in this story, by the way, but at that exact moment, he was at home having dinner or something.

Lorca was very quick to flash his badge and half force himself into the doorway before Scotty was able to oppose him. His car was outside still with its red and blue police lights flashing. “I’ve had a report of a small party of trespassers running their car right _through_ the K-3 crash site, and they were last seen making their way towards this location.”

And yeah, Lorca had gotten the name of it wrong. He didn’t even notice that he had done it.

Scotty looked him up and down - no wonder those kids had been in such a rush. “When?”

“Uh, about 2 minutes ago,” Lorca said, either with a fake smile or s semi-healthy seasoning of spite. It was hard to tell what it was exactly. “My radio’s going crazy about it.”

Scotty took a sip of his beer, he didn’t seem very impressed. “Well, nobody’s come _here_ to hide yet, and if anybody had passed by I wouldn’t be able to tell who. I’ve been watching television inside the house this whole time – but I can assure you that if anything does come up you’ll be the first to know.”

“I’d still like to have a look inside,” Lorca interjected, putting his other foot forward.

Scotty took the same step back. “…. Go ahead, but you’re not going to find anything useful in here.”

Lorca pushed past him and quickly made his way into the garage. The big garage doors where closed and the lights in there had been off, only now starting to glow back to life after Scotty had flicked them back on for him with a sign. Lorca looked around the garage for a few seconds, looked up, and then made a noise that could be transcribed as a _‘nyeah.’_ “That’s the car! That’s the exact car that I’m looking for!”

Kirk’s car had been hoisted up in the air between scenes. The license plates had also been fixed to be around the right way.

Scotty stood next to him and sighed. “It’s really not.”

“It is!” Lorca seemed almost flabbergasted. “I know for a bloody _fact_ that this car that carried those trespassers in and out there!” He demanded like the cop that he was. “The grill on the thing still full of wet grass!”

Scotty didn’t even blink. “Gabriel. That car’s been up there all afternoon. Check the book,” he looked into his can, “Plus, that’s corn. Even you should know that.”

Lorca didn’t like that response at all. He grit his teeth, went over to a work desk (the same one by the mirror, if you had been wondering) and picked up the store’s logbook, all without breaking eye contact with Scotty. It looked like he had been right, that convertible _had_ been logged in there since 2:30 that afternoon. Lorca looked back up from the logbook, but struggled to find a good comeback other than to keep looking annoyed. It would have almost been funny to watch Lorca stumble like this if Scotty was more invested in what was going on.

“What are you getting out of this?” Lorca asked.

“Money - and of course the satisfaction of doing a good job,” Scotty replied. “I hadta fix its gearbox, and a few other odd jobs.”

“You have to hoist the car up in the air to do that?”

“How much do you know about cars?”

Lorca knew very little. “…Fair enough,” he said with a glare.

Scotty began to entertain the situation. “What was the license plate on the car that you’re looking for? I’ve got a log of quite a few cars still in my paperwork, those might be able to help you.”

“Nobody was able to obtain one, at the time,” Lorca replied as he thumbed through the logbook. It was full of dates, owners, contact numbers, and of course what needed to be done with each car. “All we know is that it was a blue convertible just like that one.”

Scotty crossed his arms and shrugged. “Seems like’a lot of work to come here just to hide it up on a hoist like that, it’s so out in the open and frankly just an inconvenience; that one in particular is a bit of a pain to use, to be honest.”

“Oh don’t- don’t say something like that,” Lorca said quickly as he closed the logbook with a slam, “That just makes you sound guilty of harboring these people.”

Scotty just sighed. “Frankly, I just think that you’re thinking too hard about this. Isn’t there that big party going on tonight? Whoever ye’re looking for is probably over there.”

“Unfortunately!” Lorca replied, a slight voice crack coming out. Honestly, the only reason that he personally didn’t go down there himself was that he knew for a fact that he would have overreacted at the all, so April and a few others took it. Lorca recomposed himself with a cough into his fist. “Yes. That’s where we believe that they likely would have come from, but we still need to figure out where they went.”

“There you go, my guess is that they must have gone to their houses to hide it out. Trust me, the only place right around here that I can really think of somebody hiding out might be in the impound, and that’s already been locked up for the night.”

It was Lorca’s turn to sigh, putting a hand to the bridge of his nose as he did it.

“Or maybe, deep in the middle of somebody’s property with all their lights off. That could work,” Scotty mused to himself. “Did anybody get hurt or anything stolen?”

Lorca’s demeanor was already starting to calm down a little. “Not that I know of, yet,” he said as he studied under and around Kirk’s car as if it was going to have an ‘I like to ruin Gabriel Lorca’s day’ bumper sticker on it somewhere. Lorca, unfortunately, didn’t get to see what had happen first hand since the whole event had transpired while he was in a meeting/debriefing with Dr McCoy, so he only had a rough idea as to what he was looking for. At least he hasn’t been asked to set the tent back up.

“There you go, so it could all be a lot worse,” Scotty said with a reassuring smile. “Good luck catching them, though.”

Lorca eventually looked back at Scotty. “Yes, I suppose so.” He went over to the doorway, looked over at Kirk’s car once last time, and then left with a tip of his hat. He didn’t have any more power here, not yet at least.


	17. Scream It Out, It's Not Like They Can Hear You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Vulcans respond to Spock's distress call.

Scotty listened out carefully for Lorca’s car to be far enough away before whistling sharply with two of his fingers in his mouth. Four teenage boys towards the back of the garage all feel out a storage cupboard, Chekov falling face-first onto the floor as it happened.

“I restate my earlier question, what the hell did ye kids do?” Scotty called out to the group as he went over to them. 

Chekov stood back up and finally took off his sunglasses, blinking a few times at how bright the garage was. “Nothing _that_ bad. We’re still alive, aren’t we?”

Scotty was amused at that response. “I’m a little worried for ye lot, now. He seemed rather serious.”

Kirk ran his hand through his hair, his heart still racing. “Thanks for covering us, Mr Scott. We owe you one big time.”

“No problem,” Scotty replied with a nod, “I see no reason to snitch for just a little bit of mischief.”

There was a break in the conversation, nobody really knew exactly what to say now.

Kirk began to explore around the garage, checking out the undercarriage of his car as he did so. There was a lot more foliage stuck in there than he expected there to be. His attention then got brought over to that poster-covered corkboard next to that beer fridge; you could see his face shift as he realized what everything pinned on the wall actually was.

“…Uh, Mr Scott, why do you have a trophy wall of missing people?” Kirk asked, looking at the trophy wall of missing people. The whole thing up close was actually pretty impressive.

Scotty laughed at that description. He could see how easy somebody could come to that conclusion, yes. “It’s not a trophy wall, lad.”

Kirk’s face was still a little tight. “It’s covered in missing person fliers. That’s a bit weird, right? Am I the only one here who thinks that?”

“That’s been there since before I started working here,” Scotty explained.

“What’s it for?” Sulu asked. He was also close enough to it to read some of the headlines.

Scotty shrugged. “Well, sometimes people from out of town come here after their car breaks down, and the hope is that one day somebody might recognize somebody on there – or maybe even _be _up there. That was the thinking, at least, I believe. Apparently it started with just a case or two from the general area, but I still like to add to it every once and a while.” Plus, there was a lot of rust on the wall behind the board, and he really didn’t want to deal with replacing all of it.

“…Has that ever happened before?” Kirk asked, his voice a little softer now. “Does it work?”

“Not yet, Lad, but that’s no reason to take any of them down.” 

Kirk kept on studying the notices and photos that were attached to them. It looked as if every time a missing person’s report was in the local paper they had been cut out and tacked on. A few had been scribed over or ripped off, hopefully because whoever had been on there had been since been found. Some of the cases had even been from the other side of the county, and one or two of the ones that had dates on of went back to before he was born. Those were the most faded ones towards the middle.

One of these much older photos caught Kirk’s eye. The woman there had a rounder face and short dark hair in a bob, and it looked like whoever had taken it had caught her in the middle of a laugh. Her name was printed just below – Amanda Grayson; she had been from a small town in Arizona and was last seen over twenty years ago. The photo wasn’t the best quality, and likely would have had never been.

Kirk didn’t know exactly why his brain seemed to signal that women out of everybody else there. She didn’t look – or sound like – anybody that he had known. Spock seemed to have the same thoughts. He came up next to kirk and studied the same young woman. He flicked open his pocket computer with a motion of his wrist and one of the holographic ‘photo’s that he had stored on there of his family fuzzed open. It was the one with the pregnant women sitting down that we had seen much earlier in the story.

You could hear a not-so-soft ‘voah’ come from Chekov in the background before he rushed himself over to see what was going on.

Spock didn’t seem to care that the others had seen his computer and the holograms attached. He moved a window so it was suspended up in air next to Miss Grayson’s photo, the women seen in the family photo had been zoomed into, her’s and Miss’s Grayson’s faces being compared. There was quite in the garage as Spock worked. Mostly in trying to figure out what he was doing, but also in amazement in what he was doing. An empty, semi-transparent window was carefully placed over the Grayson report, and a sort of a ‘screenshot’ was taken of it. A few smaller windows got branched open from there – it was like a mind map.

What was going on seemed to click in Kirk before it clicked in Spock. _No way._ “…That was,” Kirk said softly as he took a few slow steps back towards the rest of the group, “Guys, I think that one might have been _his _mom.”

The device in Spock’s had beeped. It was a rapid, get-your-attention _hey let’s go! let’s go!_ beep. Spock looked like he had been startled by it for half a second before closed everything up with the press of a single button on the disk’s side, searched the garage for something, and then bolted out the back door. He practically pushed Chekov out of the way as he did it.

“Hey-“ Chekov said at that.

Kirk excused himself and quickly followed after him.

* * *

There was a bit of a grassy field behind the garage. Unused like the one over at the Kirk’ property, but much better maintained and far more green. Spock was running – he was running a lot faster than any human that Kirk had seen run. Spock jumped over a half-fallen wooden fence single-handily like a gymnast and ran through a freshly-harvested wheat field next door, the ground still soft and autumn brown.

“Hey – slow down!” Kirk called out, trying catch up to him.

Spock called something back to him with a crack in his voice. He suddenly stopped, dragged out a floating window out from his computer and began to pace around in a circle. You could see the rising panic in his eyes. Whatever the man needed to do, he had to do it now and he had to do it perfectly.

Kirk looked up to the night sky as soon as he managed to catch up to him. You could barely see it – just up in the sky in the distance – there was a gap in a low-hanging cloud with it being almost caught and taken away like a thread of silk. It looked like a fighter plane should have been flying through it, but there was no plane to be seen – only what impact it had on its surroundings.

Kirk watched it zoom overhead _– it had to have been an alien ship! It had to have been! Could aliens make their ships invisible? Why not? They were aliens, after all._

Spock seemed to agree. His movements seemed to only get more frantic as he struggled to get its attention.

The invisible ‘plane’ disappeared back into a raincloud as quickly as it had appeared. There was no fanfare, no flashy alien lights, no low-flying ship to chase where every second mattered, nothing.

It was over.

There was a moment of nothing at all and everything at once just suddenly stopping in its place, Spock included. It was over! – that was it. It was less excitement than seeming somebody peel back the curtain to a window, look at what was going on for half a moment, decide it wasn’t worth their time and close it back again.

Cold wind blew past. It was a sobering moment, it felt the same as that little blip in time right after a terrible accident, but right before anybody runs in to help.

Kirk took his eyes off the sky and back down to Spock before him, Kirk was still panting hard. You could see it in Spock’s body language how much he was tensing up, a slight shake to his hands.

Spock screamed out into the sky with 20-odd years’ worth of pent up emotion and frustrations that he hadn’t ever been able to let out before. He threw his computer disk out as far as he could pitch it. Tears gathered around his eyes as he processed what felt like a million things at once - he was unable to focus on a single one.

God, he hadn’t cried since he was a tiny child. He wasn’t even crying! Not really! He was just, god he was just standing there and being_ emotional,_ of all things.

Kirk didn’t know what to do. He took a step forward, but was afraid of doing anything more.

That was it. Spock’s only chance of getting home was gone.

Oh, the research ship that all of those Vulcans were up and comfortable in had gotten the flare all right, and then a scout flyer – the exact same sort of ship that Spock had _ruined,_ had just flown by. It would have just flown by, seen that whole bureaucratic hell of a crash site, seen a partial Vulcan life scan at _best,_ and then went back up into orbit to report on the bad news.

A _Partial_ Vulcan. For _fuck_ sake.

Do you know what? Do you, dear reader, have any idea what a _partial-_Vulcan life form scan result is going to mean to them?

Guess. Actually fucking guess! I have all day. Spock has all day. Guess for me. Go on.

A corps.

A fucking _corps_! That’s the answer.

If any of the Vulcan scanners had picked up anything, it was going to be read as a dead body in some old shed a good amount of distance away from where the flare had been sent out. They would have seen those tents and the lack of ‘Spock’ around them and come to the conclusion that the flare had been simply been sent out on accident as a result of aliens messing around with the ship.

Accidents, or any other further contaminations weren’t worth the risk associated, and so they would likely never touch this empty excuse of a system ever again. 

The Vulcan team who were up there right now would wait to watch that stupid alien rocket launch and then they would leave. They would leave back to Vulcan as if nothing was wrong and Spock, the half-alien freak, would be stuck here on this miserable little planet with no chance of ever going back home.

It made him sick.

Spock was a freak and nobody had even the slightest thought to actually inform him, there was no denying it now. It was like they couldn’t be bothered, or that any hint of potential was stuck inside some random ambassador’s son was more important than actually telling him anything useful about himself.

Hey, no, no. None of this sounding right.

Spock was overreacting.

He _had_ to have been.

He would have been told! It was only logical that they would have informed him about this sort of hybridization early on! It wouldn’t make sense _not_ to! It wasn’t like nobody on Vulcan didn’t know what a Human was.

Spock would know about this and it would be on his file.

Spock _knew_ that he was just overreacting!

Yeah.

…That was it.

The emotions of the moment were affecting him and not letting him actually think. It had been a busy hour, no wonder he was already so mentally exhausted. Spock just needed a good, long, lie down.

Kirk came up from behind him and offered a tight hug. Kirk was warm.

Spock grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him to the ground with every inch of strength that was left in him.

Kirk made an aggressive _‘gugah’ _winded sound as he fell to the grass. He caught his breath, the first couple were a little labored. He had mostly just been caught off guard, that’s all. 

The two looked at each other. Kirk wasn’t hurt, and any offense he might have been feeling was hidden under a sympathetic face. His eyes and his smile were soft. Spock, on the other hand, looked like a wreak. An _emotional _mess with a stress-packed bags under his eyes ready for a trip to nowhere. He had looked better composed the first time they had met, and he had practically been on fire at the time.

Kirk patted the ground next to him with a closed-mouth smile.

Spock looked over to another point on the ground.

“Lie down with me, Mr Spock,” Kirk ordered softly, patting the dirt again.

Spock looked back at Kirk, kicked some upturned soil, looked back into the sky one last time, and then surrender and laid down.

It was quite, but this time it was a nicer quite. The wind was slow and the clouds where heavy, only specks of the stars being allowed to shine though. The ground beneath them was freezing cold, but a nice cold, like when you turn over a pillow to the cold side when you’re trying to fall asleep.

All of a sudden there was a huge burst of rain from above. It was as if an hour’s worth had suddenly came down at them – likely due to whatever that Vulcan ship had done to the atmosphere when they had passed through.

Kirk and Spock laughed. Real, honest actual laughter from both.

The laughter only really lasted a moment before Spock went quite again. Kirk got up and began his walk to try and go find Spock’s computer.

Spock didn’t help him, he instead just stayed down in the dirt down where he belonged.

Kirk never really found out that he only reason that he really stayed down there so that he wouldn’t be seen trying desperately to stop himself from crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both of our mains have had their ‘screaming out into the sky’ moments, that’s got to be at least a little narratively important. 
> 
> I don’t really know if it’s worth mentioning or not, but in the time between chapter 14-17 being finished and posted, I lost my grandfather. I think you can see a lot of that pre-event stress and frustration used as a bit of a muse in this chapter (and then later cleaned up, the style is even a little different than normal,) it’s times like these all you can do is write, I suppose. I’ve also had a big lab report that I’m meant to be working on for uni during that time - so of course more Fanfiction got done. I posted this chapter instead of working on that one. 
> 
> ‘Lie down with me Mr Spock.’ man shut up and get back to editing. 
> 
> On another note, I’m half toying with the idea of turning [or, really, using this fic as a base of] this into it’s own original story once it’s all done. I’ve got changes to both all the charas (they’re more or less the only things here that I don’t own) and story beats that would need too/could change, and why not? It’s all my work, anyways; and EL James got to do it. It couldn’t hurt change it all up and then to run it through an editor and put it up there for like, a dollar or something as an ebook somewhere as a short-ish generic semi-period semi-romance. At least then I can say I did something productive in 2020, right? 
> 
> Who knows. 
> 
> The first big change is that it’s going to be set in country Queensland [Australia.] Everything else I’ll work out when the ‘Star Trek’ version is all written and done. The Star Trek version is fun. 
> 
> We’ll be finding more about Miss Grayson in the next chapter, if you where wondering.


	18. Whatever happened to Miss Amanda Grayson?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made up a lot of the details for this chapter because quite frankly, who’s going to stop me? The police? 
> 
> A lot of the details that I used in this segment is also very loosely based on what I remember of a fic that I had read ages ago, but for the life of me haven’t been able to find again (that’s what the bookmark function is for, I say, never bookmarking anything.) These two are cute together, okay.

_Planet 3 episode 35 – ‘The Boyfriend Who Never Existed’_

_An electronic theme song faded in, and once the hosts began to speak it faded back out again. It’s a 16-bit chiptune theme with some electric guitar thrown in over it for good measure, and the full version could be found on YouTube if you knew where to look. _

_The narrators where young adults going by their voices and the way they spoke, and greatly enjoyed what they did together. Food had been ordered for about an hour and a half in the future from when they had started recording, and both had their computers out full of notes and another old laptop that was recording the audio, the usual practice for the two. The first narrator hummed a bit of the theme before he began speaking. _

_Although it didn’t seem like a detail that was to make much of an effect on the grand scheme of things, one of the laptops had a faded sticker of the IDIC logo on it, overlapped just slightly by a pride one. _

G: “Good afternoon, moorin’, night, or whenever you’re listin’. Our story today takes place in a small, Arizonian town in the year 1946. A great year if you’re a fan of years that contain the numbers one, nine, four, and/or five in them.

It’s the autumn school holidays, and a local primary school teacher seems to disappear with no warning two days before the next term was meant to begin. Her name was Amanda Grayson, and was 26 at the time.”

R: “Amanda was a 3rd-grade teacher at Mt Evermore state Elementary School, a somewhat small place in the town of Bestbroke, Arizona. The town is known now and was known as being – and in no disrespect to any listeners from Bestbroke, hot as shit and too away from everything else to be worth going to outside of being a mid-road trip pit stop. It was the type of place that you would marry a high school sweetheart and never leave – or be the top of the list on a Vulcan tourism guide for Earth.”

G: “At the time, Amanda was in the real meat of her carrier, and had just started seeing a man who had moved to the town a few months prior. This man, apparently going under the name ‘Sarek’ when asked, was a prime suspect in her missing person’s case when it broke; but had disappeared with her. This also included all of Sarek’s possessions, a great deal of Amanda’s, and also, since it was included in the police report for some reason and we’ll mention it too, a rather large peace lily plant that Amanda was rather fond of.”

R: “When this ‘Sarek’ fellow was looked into, it had been found that the paperwork that he had been using when he first got to the town had been all forged, and there had been no evidence of his existence anywhere else in the state. It was as if he had just turned up, lived there for a couple of months, and then returned to whatever void he had come from with Miss Grayson in tow.”

G: “Amanda had not talked to any other person about plans to move or travel out, and had even left a great deal of money in the bank and the next term’s future classwork behind. Her, companion, I guess, had been a rather reserved person, being known as the type to put in quite a lot of effort into making sure that he _wasn’t_ known. A bit of a harmless weirdo, to put it how others would have.”

R: “My bet is that this guy was a vampire.”

G: “Oh, of-fucking-course.” [_laughter_] “It’s like that was his goal. But, yes - yes – A murder in full view of a women in the height of her life, two runaway loves leaving to make new lives for themselves somewhere else, or something a little more… out of this world?

Hello. My name is Gene and I’m with my co-host; the one and only Ricky-C,”

R: “Ohayo,”

G: “And we will be your sneak peek into the strange, mysterious and unknown for the next hour. Welcome to Episode 35 of ‘Planet 3.’”

_The theme kept on playing for a few more seconds before it dipped out one more time as a sponsor roll played. It was the same two narrators. _

R: “This episode of ‘Planet 3’ is actually sponsored by,”_ [free-to-use drumroll sfx] _“Us! This week, at least. We have merch now.”

G: “Yell heah we do. If you’re wanting to pick up a shirt or something alike –“

R: “- Drawn by me - ”

G: “- Hell yeah and they’re great – then you can just head down to our store down in the link below this episode. It’s a neat little way to support us directly and actually get something out of it. We’ll be changing up the designs every once and a while, and we’ll keep you updated on that stuff on our socials when they do end up changing.”

_The theme came back once more, and then the episode actually started. _

R: “So there you are. The Second World War has only just ended and life is slowing going back to normal… […]

* * *

The rest of the group had been waiting for Kirk and Spock to return to the garage. Sulu was sitting on the stairs leading out, Scotty and Chekov standing side-by-side in the doorway. Kirk gave them all a wave as he approached, but Spock just made his way back in with nothing more than a hand out to excuse himself. They all watched him walk in.

Sulu was the first to speak. “So what happened?”

Kirk exhaled put his foot on the bottom step. There was only about four of them in total, and all made out of old slabs of wood. Kirk was still a little flushed from running so much, “I think… I think whatever Spock did at the site worked to get their attention, but nobody saw him way over here. I bet they thought that whatever flare or sos that was sent out was by accident, or something.”

Chekov and Sulu exchanged looks. Scotty was watching Spock study the old photo wall once again. No holographic sci-fi screens around him like before, he was only there to look.

Kirk excused himself around Scotty and followed Spock back inside.

“Wait a moment - what the hell are you talking about?” Chekov asked. 

Kirk stopped and turned around. “What do you mean?”

“Who’s ‘_they_’?”

Kirk just looked at him. “Who’da think? The Russians?”

“_Hey_,” Chekov replied. “I can ask.”

Kirk sighed. He was anything but in the mood to talk about this. “The _Aliens_, Pavel,” Kirk replied as if it was the hundredth time he had explained it that day. “The aliens that we put all that work in an hour ago to contact? With the whole-ass shit and the actual US government around it?”

Chekov and Sulu swapped looks again. You could see a small light ignite in Sulu, but in reading the room he just kept it to himself.

Chekov paused. “…He’s not an alien-“

“Of _course _he’s an alien, Pavel! He’s _green_!” Kirk yelled out with a sigh, his arm out vaguely towards Spock’s direction as he said it. Two ‘Pavel’s in a row and, Kirk was serious here.

Chekov closed his mouth.

“What the hell did you _think _was going on?”

“Hey – hey – Calm down! You guys just ran off. Ve vere vorried - that’s all,” Chekov snapped back. “Don’t treat me like I’m some kind of idiot.”

Spock loudly ripped off the Amanda Grayson notice from the board, folded it up, put it in his usual inside breast pocket, and then left to go wait outside. The front door was left open, and you could see him drag over and wait in one of the old chairs on deck. 

Kirk just felt worse that he did already. He deflated, shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, and then walked towards the front door, going under his car as he did it. Kirk wasn’t much of a ‘car guy,’ not really. He could change a tire or attend to a random, out of place sound coming from the engine, but he would much rather take the car to an actual mechanic for anything else.

The underside of Kirk’s car looked somewhat normal. Dirty and stuffed with loose foliage, but a normal regardless. Repeatedly going through fields like he had been doing over the last few days probably wasn’t the best thing to do with it, looking at how much of it was in there.

Scotty had been the one to follow just behind him, perhaps to talk to Kirk on the side. He instead stopped right next to Kirk; his face scrunched up a little. Something was clearly wrong with the underside of the car.

Kirk looked up at him. “What’s wrong?”

Scotty turned his body angle around, but was still looking at the same point of the car.

“…. Is there something wrong?”

“Not really – look – look at this,” Scotty said. He pulled on some green wedged grass between two parts with the amount of force you might open a door with.

A decent-sized chunk of a part from the undercarriage fell right into Kirk’s arms in two jaggered piecers. A huge bubble of oil fell with it like a blood clot – all one could hope was that Kirk didn’t value his shirt, or his face, too much.

That didn’t change Scotty’s face. “Blimey,” he muttered to himself under his breath, holding the stalk in one hand. It was very clear that the only thing keeping it in place this whole time _was_ that grass.

Kirk blinked a few times and spat out a bit of the oil that had fallen in his mouth. “Is this good, Mr Scott?”

Scotty took a moment to reply as he looked for more damage. “Whatever guardian angles you’ve got looking over you, son, thank then now,” he affirmed. Scotty looked concerned, but still clearly still rather impressed with it all.

Kirk wasn’t. A tight knot started to bubble in his gut, right around about where his liver sat.

* * *

R: “There have been a couple of old Jane Doe cases that have popped up over the years that may have been Amanda. Although none of them have been directly tied to her, and with how long ago it’s all happened, the chances of finding a case to match to her nowadays is uh, pretty much nothing. Unless a great grandkid shows up, or something like that. The Elmar By Jane Doe is often linked to Miss Grayson, since it was found fully decomposed only a couple of years after she had disappeared and only a couple of cities away. This body would have been too tall to have been Amanda, as well as the two having incompatible dental records. Regardless, it’s still somewhat interesting to think about.”

G: “Another thing that’s interesting to think about is the possibility that Amanda could have simply up and left without any fowl play – you don’t usually pack overnight bags to go and be left in a ditch by the side of a highway.”

R: [quieter] “Actually no that does happen sometimes, don’t say that.” 

G: “Anyways!” [_clap_] “It’s the dude that she was with leading up to her disappearance that is the more suspect part. If anything, we really should have focused this episode on him. This was a strange dude, even for a 1940’s standards. He was ‘Sarek’ to the people who Amanda had talked about him with, but ‘Stephan Michaels’ to the town government and the guy he paid his rent too. This name likely being a fake one, along with every other official detail about this guy, so it’s just ‘Sarek’ it is from us for the rest of the episode.”

R: “Mr ‘Sarek’ had lived in Bestbroke only for around 8 months before he was last seen. He didn’t hold any job, but spent most of his time in the town library or cafes, and most of those café trips towards the end had been with Miss Grayson in tow. One of the few photos that we have of him was one taken with her next to him at a school fair that Mt Evermore state Elementary School had done, and put in a newspaper that was talking all about it. Amanda had been looking after a student art show at the time and he would have likely come in to say hello.

The photo really isn’t that great considering how old it is, but it’s the best photo of Sarek that we have. He’s a good deal taller than Amanda and is standing very straight-faced and tall in a low brimmed hat and a long jacket. He was described as a tall and angler man in his late 20s or early 30s, and never seemed to tan. It’s wildly believed that the two of them had become a bit of an item in the short time they had known each other - even though neither had ever official confirmed it.

If those two did end up running away together, I do sort of think that these two would have been a bit of a cute couple.”

G: “Why’d’a think that?”

R: “Not quite sure. They just have a vibe together.”

G: “If he didn’t end up killing her, that is.”

R: “Yes, exactly that, sadly.”

* * *

The couple sat together in their usual spot in a booth towards the back of the café. It was a Tuesday morning, some time just after 11am. One was a woman with soft, short brown hair and had coffee and a slice of cake, and the other was a taller man who simple just had a black tea with him. The two were really nothing alike, but highly enjoyed being in the other’s company.

The women finished stirring her drink, she had taken the sugar cubes from her date’s tea plate and added them to her own cup. “What’s wrong, Sarek? You’re not one to get distracted,” she asked, watching him with his chin on his arm, looking at the autumn-brown street just outside of the café. It was due to storm later that night.

The man took his eyes off the window and then back at the women. “There is nothing wrong, I am just thinking of something else.” He fixed the collar of his coat and took a sip of his tea. The jacket didn’t quite suit him, and his hat was low and over his eyebrows, but that was what he always looked like when outside. Amanda joked sometimes that he gave off the impression of a bit of a vampire. Sarek spoke with an accent, but it was hard to pinpoint what it exactly was. It sounded a bit like if you had kept Australia in a bubble, still speaking English, for a couple hundred years and then re-introduced them to the rest of the world. It was thick and rather exotic - that’s what I’m getting at here.

“Oh?” she asked with a soft smile. “Do enlighten me, Mr Sarek,” she teased.

Sarek shook his head, just as softy. “It is not much, I am just scheduled to return home in a week. I suppose I am just, ‘taking it all in.’”

“That’s soon,” Amanda thought out loud, “Back to the ‘big city,’ right?” She asked, knowing full well what the ‘big city’ was and where exactly in the stars it was.

Sarek though for a moment with his hands together. He looked at his, and then to his date’s on the table. Sarek’s hands where a lot bonier than Amanda’s, and where always just slightly flushed a pale green as if he had just taken them out of a pair of winter gloves and the dye had leaked out onto them. “Once you are done with your beverage, would you like to accompany me on a walk?” He asked quietly.

Amanda swallowed her mouthful of cake. “Don’t we usually go on one together after tea?”

Sarek’s tone changed as if he was trying to stop himself from blushing. “I wish to talk to you about something, but I feel as if here would not be as appropriate as I would like it to be. It is a bit of a,” he paused, trying to remember the exact word he was looking for, “proposition, but I believe that I perhaps just need to sort my thoughts out with you.”

She had a very strong feeling immediately as to what he was going to ask her, but Amanda just smiled once again and said that idea ‘sounded lovely.’

Amanda Grayson was last seen in person five days after that. Their cases were marked forever cold only a few years later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things that these two morons (the Podcasters, not Kirkieboy n Spock) somehow know:  
>What a Vulcan is
> 
> Things they apparently don’t know:  
>What a Vulcan looks like


	19. Let’s Talk Aliens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk hitchhikes back home, one of the podcasts hosts makes a connection.

Kirk wasn’t a bitter man. He honestly tried his best not to be.

But there is just something about standing right under your car as a piece of it falls out and into your arms, and then being told directly by the mechanic standing next to you that he ‘can’t in good faith send you off with the car damaged like that’ yada yada something something that stick into a guy’s liver like a rouge splitter.

So no. Kirk tried not to be, but he wasn’t infaluable. He wiped his face down with a spare towel, thanked the mechanic for his help so far, left his number to call once a replacement part had arrived, and then promptly left.

Right now, Kirk was walking down a road towards town on foot, his jacket zipped up all the way and the rest of his mini-crew scatted around him. Nobody was really talking, none really had a real reason too. There was a rock in Kirk’s shoe. He kicked his toe on the road to push it in the gap between the top of his foot and the top of his shoe. It wasn’t perfect, but it was slightly better than before.

A light came from behind the group from some kind of car. Kirk hopped to the side of the road and looked back towards it in the same motion. It was a smaller pickup that had rolled to a stop, the kind of car you would ask to borrow if you wanted to move a sofa or something.

“Jim!” a woman’s voice called out to him. It sounded to be the same age as he was. It was Janice Rand, leaning out of the passenger side of the car. Her hair was down and she gave him a big wave. “What happened to your car?” She asked.

Kirk stopped and turn to her casually on his heel. His hands were still in his pockets. “Drank too much,” He replied with a shrug after thinking up a response.

“Bullshit,” Rand called back with a big of a laugh. “You’ve never driver sober in your life.”

“Hey now,” Kirk said back as he half skipped up to that truck. “That car was ‘supposed to be my college fund, I’m allowed to be careful with it.”

Rand shrugged in return. “Fair. Can’t falter that.”

“Oh - Sorry that I didn’t say anything before I left, I couldn’t find you.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” She replied, “I was busy anyways right until the cops showed up.”

If Kirk had ears that could perk up (a curse of being a Hominidae, but there wasn’t anything he could fix about that) they would have. “_Cops?”_ he said with a bit of a crack in his voice.

“Mm-hm.” Rand’s hand was on her forehead, keeping her now-loose fringe out of her eyes. “’Bout half an hour after your friend fainted on the stage-”

“-We left right after that, sorry-”

“-I thought so; anyways,” Her train of thought had vanished faster than she was planning it to have, “All the lights and stuff went a bit crazy and then the cops show up out of nowhere, it was a total mess.”

Kirk bit his bottom lip, he felt a little responsible. “Awe shit, that’s no good.”

Sulu and Chekov exchanged looks. The two of them, plus Spock, had joined in closer to listen to the conversation.

Rand nodded, “Those guys who had been running the thing must have bailed right before they got there, nobody was able to answer to anything, and any who did were too drunk to even make a coherent point. The two of us managed to slip out at the beginning.”

“So no more party?”

“Eh. Probably, but we’re headin’ home now.”

“’We’?”

“Chris and I.”

Kirk blinked. “’Kris?’ who’s that?”

Christine Chapple moved herself out of her own window and gave a soft smile. It looked like she had bleached her hair super recently, or had managed to get ahold of a nice-quality wig.

“Ah. Hey Chris,” Kirk replied with a smile and a loose wave in return. She was a bit older than either of them, but Kirk still knew who she was.

“Are you guys walking home like this?” Rand asked, bring the conversation back to just her and Kirk.

Kirk offered a ‘looks like it’ shrug. “We’lbe right.”

“Nah you won’t, get in,” she insisted. Chapple nodded along.

Kirk took a moment back. “You sure?”

“Yeah, we’re going through the town anyways,” Chapple replied. “It’s a bitch to walk it even during the day.”

The truck only had a cab for two people, so the boys all got in the tray in the back. Chekov threw himself on a half-rolled up mattress with a bounce, while Spock and Chekov actually used the steps at the back of the tray to get up. Kirk came up the car’s passenger rolled-down window and put his hands on the gap. “Thank you,” He said to the two in the cabin, the small light above the reverse window seemed to highlight still-packing bags under his eyes.

A nod was returned. Spock lifted Kirk up from the side and into the tray without a single sweat.

The drive back to town was nicer when you get to sit down and turn your brain off for it. The excitement of their stunt from an hour-or-so ago was still in their minds, but now they could wander a little.

Spock and Kirk found themselves with their backs resting on the cab and legs splayed out on the tray. The cold night air was blowing around and the sky had almost completely cleared. Spock had always been on the quiet side, but now he had just grown cold. He closed his eyes, but not tight enough to let himself fall asleep. That’s all that he really wanted to do at that moment.

* * *

R: “Okay so like for real now, let’s talk aliens.”

G: “Oh fuck! Yeah! finally let’s go.”

R: “James was last seen in person on the night of the 11th of July, a Friday, at that party we mentioned before. What little records we have, show that the KY-6 ‘crash’ was on the Tuesday before it, and that lines up with the rest of the timeline with James is seen going around town the Wednesday morning with an outside friend. Fair enough very possible on its own, sure, but here’s where things start to get weird.”

G: ['_whatever the sound of a man trying to stop himself from getting too excited over reading over a scrip' is,' could also be transcribed as a casual ‘mhm-hm’.]_

R: “On Sunday morning through to Tuesday afternoon, there was apparent sightings of what people assumed to be missionaries around the town - those men in suit types who come to your door to talk to you, that sort of thing. This wasn’t considered important information to the James Kirk case, but did get brought up quite a few times (and so it got written down) when locals were asked if they had seen or heard anything unusual once it was investigated.”

G: “But! But! Okay so. ‘Kinda tall, quite, put tightly together men who kept to themselves, and only seen in the town for a tiny period of time.’ A little weird, but nothing you would really put a hoot about. Where have we heard that before? James’s friend! _Boom_. That's a lead, baby.”

R: “Please keep in mind that Planet 3 does not condone Mormon slander.”

G: "I’m not talking like – real Mormons! But like – okay so like-" [_he rambles incoherently or a moment, clearly very off-script. Halfway through a word he pauses, as if he had noticed something.]_

R: …. [_An extended pause as if he was keeping what he was about to say to himself.]_

G: “…Yaright?”

R: “Hu-yeah I am. Sorry. Keep talking.”

G: “Anyways. Yadda spaceship crash and all that exciting jazz withstanding; we also know that at some point something must have happened to the Kirk residence itself. The place was abandoned fairly quickly after James would have gotten back home – there was still food in the fridge and his stuff in his room unpacked, the place wasn’t just a pitstop for a few nights.

Other damages to the house, outside of simple degradation from age, show strong signs of forced entry. Why was James’s house broken into? Aliens.”

R: _[a small sigh_] “it’s always aliens with you.”

G: “I am a simple man and I never get to talk about them for this show. Okay but like, not ‘aliens’ aliens. It could have totally also been normal human police who did it, but like.”

R: [_soft pause_] “…Okay I’ll bite, how did aliens break into Mr Kirk’s house?”

G: “I am so godddam thankful you asked.” [the _sound of a few pieces of paper, likely stabled together, being opened up and flipped through_] “Here’s a very loose theory based mostly on me thinking way too deeply into all of this.

Number one. James Kirk, either shortly after he arrived in town or on his way there, finds the KY-6 crash that’s actual an alien spaceship. Two. James takes the alien back home and the two chill there for a bit. Three. Kirk and his new friend go together to this party that happened a few days after the crash, possibly as a cover to try and go back to return to the ship.

This leaves me with two ideas. One, Kirk and friend left the party, went to the ship, and then something happened then-and-there at the site; or they just went back home, got tracked by whatever people were looking over the crash, and they took the alien back there by force by breaking into the house to get them – that would explain the damaged doors and window. Like – it’s way easier to dissect a dude it in an area that you’ve already made all nice and ready for it than in some random house. In both possible timelines it still leaves Kirk floating around aimlessly – I just hope he wasn’t killed in the process. That'd be a little anticlimactic.

It all seems a bit stock, but it works within what evidence was left behind.”

R: “Given that this is ‘totally’ a story about aliens.”

G: “Yes. Exactly. A hundred percent.”

R: "Although, it doesn't account for why James's car was left at a mechanics."

G: "It was a coverup. He was trying it hide it from the government." 

R: “Uh... huh. … So what about the crop circles?”

[…]

* * *

Sulu and Chekov were the first to be dropped off, and both closer to the town. They were gone with quick ‘see you later’s and nothing more. It took a little while longer to go back out to the Kirk property, Kirk leaned forward and out towards the driver’s window to give directions on the way there.

All the lights were off, and the trees around cash long moonlight shadow onto the building.

Kirk jumped off the side of the tray, hurting his knees a little in the process. “Thanks for the lift,” he said as he pulled his jacket back down.

“No problem,” Chapple replied.

Rand got out of the car at the same time as Spock did, leaving her door open. Spock went up to the front door, but couldn’t do much to get in but to wait and watch the other two talk for a bit more.

There was quiet from both Kirk and Rand as they stood alone in the slightly muddy dirt driveway. Clearly, a conversation was meant to be happening here, but neither could think of what it should have been.

Kirk started. “Thank you, aga-“

“Who is Spock, anyways?” Rand asked over the top of him at the same time. It was rather casual, as if she was asking to double-check if she had remembered his name correctly.

Kirk paused, he closed his mouth and ran his tongue over his teeth as he thought the question over. You’ld think he would have thought up a response to that question by now, but nope. “Just a friend of mine. Why?” He replied.

Rand’s face stiffened up a little. That wasn’t a good answer, or at least the one she was expecting. She was still, but only for a moment.

“Is Spock an alien?” She asked directly and a soft face. She crossed her arms as she said it.

It took Kirk a moment to respond. “…What?”

“Is _he_ an _alien_?” Rand persisted.

Kirk felt offended on Spock’s behalf. She was right, but _still_. “No? What kind of question is that?”

Rand shook her head. “Jim he’s green.”

“I _noticed_ – goddamit!” Kirk threw his body back a little, exclaiming it a little louder than he intended too.

Spock simply watched on. If he knew how to he might have stepped in to intervene. A soft 'J-Im,' was said under his breath as he watching the conversation only grow more and more hostile. 

“Look! I know the whole thing’s a mess, but I’ve got this under my control,” Kirk said quickly.

“Do you?”

“_Yes_.” He snapped. Kirk burred with his hands over his face, squishing his cheeks up. “Look, I’m going to sort of all this out, okay?” he pulled one of his hands through his hair. “I’ld rather have Spock camp out here before he’s able to get rescued than in whatever lab they’ve set up in a tent over there.” He punctuated ‘there’ with an arm out towards to nowhere.

Rand’s face didn’t change. “Just, be careful, okay?”

Kirk pointed his attention to the ground. That Rock had moved back to under the arch of his foot. “Yeah, okay.”

“I mean it, Jim. This whole thing is starting to stress me out.”

Kirk brushed the comment away. _Yeah? And how the hell did you think I feel?_

Neither Rand nor Kirk had any idea that this was going to be the last time that they would see each other. When Miss Rand would be asked in the near future what she knew about Jim Kirk’s whereabouts, all she would say that she and a friend had dropped him off at his house, they had chatted a bit about the party, and then parted ways. If she had known in hindsight how this story was going to end she would have probably changed what she had said to him.

Rand looked over to Spock, she could hardly make him out in the poor lighting. Slightly bony, slightly off, but only if you were looking for discrepancies. Spock adjusted his sling and took his eyes off her and over to an overgrown, half-dead plant by the doorway.

Rand looked back to Kirk. “Well... I guess I’ll see you later, then.”

“Yeah, yeah. See you later,” Kirk replied in the same tone of voice, “And thank you again for the lift.”

“Don’t mention it," She began to walk back to the truck, "and don’t do anything stupid."

“I will! Don’t worry!”

That didn’t land as nearly as well as Kirk had hoped.

* * *

[R.Cawson.22 – New P3 episode on Sunday - ]  
>Hey do you remember that Amanda Grayson case?

[new podcast ep soon new podcast ep soon (Xx_DJ_GDawg_xX)]  
>this is the second time you’ve brought her up this week  
>have I missed a new lead or something

>No. I’ve just been editing the James Kirk ep, right

>yeah

  
>And I’ve just had a thought about the ‘Mormons’ we joked about. I’m half thinking about editing most of that bit out, to be honest, but something stuck out to me about it.

>What did the mormons do  
>Im confused

>Do you think that Sarek /was/ one?

>who the fuck

>The main suspect in the Grayson case – that tall weird dude. You described the people seen around the town + the other guy that James Kirk was seen around the same way.

>Ima be real with u once we record an episode my brain just empties out everything to do with it

>nvm

>you really need to stop going over the backlog  
>I don’tk now how you can do it  
>hate hearing my own voice like that

>Yes that’s why I’m the one who edits.

  
>can’t wait for the spinoff where it’s just  
>Uh  
>’dick and his theory about how every unsolved rural disappearance is connected to some skinny people from outer space’  
>it’s like 5 hours long

>You’ld still listen to it.

>fuck yeah I would


End file.
